Swimmer's Daily

  • Four-time Paralympic gold medallist Ellie Simmonds wants you to come join her at the 2015 IPC Swimming World Championships in Glasgow in six months time.

  • Oscar Kightley is two laps into his swim to survive.

    The actor and comedian has spent the past 20 years being scared of the water.

    The 44-year-old said his fear of the water followed two near-drowning incidents.

    “That kind of kept me out, but I always knew I was missing out on something,” he said.

    “Our Earth is covered two-thirds by water, so if you don’t know how to handle yourself in that two-thirds you’re kind of limiting your life.”

    He’s been confronting his fear of the water and learning to swim since 2012 and has become strong enough to finish two lengths of a pool.

    This summer, he’s aiming to spend more time in the water.

    “My dream was to just get off the bottom of the pool and to be in water over my head and not freak out,” he said.

    Read stuff.co.nz

  • With SeaWorld seeing attendance dips, its CEO step down, and people protesting the Miami Seaqiarium’s captivity of Lolita, more and more people are getting involved in trying to save aquatic animals from being used as playthings for tourists.

    Now a new petition, this one targeting “swimming with dolphins” programs, has hit the internet pleading for Congress to step in and end the programs.

    Swimming with dolphins is a popular tourist attraction throughout the state, including in South Florida, where you can swim with a porpoise for $100 a session.

    Sponsored by his Dolphin Project, says swimming with dolphins programs pose a health risk not only to the animals but to people as well.

    “There are hundreds of documented cases of injuries from participants, including reports that humans have been rammed or bitten by dolphins during their interactions,” the petition reads. “It is next to impossible to determine the behavior of a cetacean on a daily basis, especially considering captive dolphins are stressed and frustrated. Expecting the dolphins, children, and adults to follow the rules is extremely far-fetched.”

    Read Broward / Palm Beach New Times

    Photo by Upsilon Andromedae

  • We knew she was a world champion swimmer, but we discovered last Saturday that Alia Atkinson is also a powerful speaker. As she addressed the annual business conference of the GraceKennedy Group, she recounted how she extinguished the notion that swimming “was not for the likes of her”.

    With little support at the beginning of her career, Alia made a lonely path up to the finals of the 2012 Olympics and wondered to herself if this was where she would stop, but said she decided to fight on because she did not want to go through life wondering “what if?”

    Alia’s response to those who murmured that ‘swimming was not really a black woman’s sport’ was to work even harder, because, she says, “I am very stubborn… I had to believe in myself…I knew what my goals were; and to reach them, I had to try that much harder”.

    She said the ones who had a negative attitude towards her were the very ones who motivated her to persevere. “I am a myth-buster,” she declared. “I am on top, and I am a black Jamaican swimmer!”

    Read Jamaica Observer

  • Four members of Team USA Swimming spent the day training young athletes in the water.

    NewsChannel 3’s Blaine Stewart takes us there.

    When larger than life celebrities, like 11-time Olympic medalist Ryan Lochte, visit Naval Station Norfolk, it’s bound to make a splash.

    For Lochte and his teammates, Friday’s swim clinics at the fleet rec pool are more than just a way to inspire young athletes. This is about giving back.

    This is the second time Lochte and gold medalist Tyler Clary have partnered with the USO for days like this — which hit home for Anthony Ervin, who won the gold in 2000. His father was a marine in the Vietnam War.

    This is the first USO tour for Ervin, and Tim Phillips, who’s quickly learned giving his time to the next generation of Olympic hopefuls may be almost as rewarding as earning another medal.

    See wtkr.com

  • This is not the Speedo that most folks know — and love to ridicule.

    No teeny, tiny swim briefs in this ad. None of its former spokesjocks like Michael Phelps or, for heaven’s sakes, Mark Spitz, adorned in Olympic medals. The Speedo of 2015 is, instead, focusing less on competitive swimming and more on everyday water sports. To do that, it’s turned to a Speedo spokesman who few folks might have imagined: a 91-year-old swimmer.

    Jurgen Schmidt is a Huntington Beach, Calif., retiree who still swims about a mile almost every day at a Masters team practice. In a three-minute video ad posted by Speedo, Schmidt, a retired comptroller for a meatpacking company who turns 92 next month, offers this telling advice to folks young and old: “Don’t be afraid to get in the water.”

    In an interview with USA TODAY, Schmidt, who also cares for his 86-year-old wife, Adrianne, who has Alzheimer’s, says any short-term fame or talk-show visits almost certain to accompany this new commercial aren’t important. “I don’t have an inflated ego. I just have a love of the water,” he says.

    Read USA Today

    http://youtu.be/-Uw2FLNDU1U

  • The elite swimmers in Team Speedo are among the fastest, strongest, and most dedicated athletes in the world. Olympic gold medalists Ryan Lochte, Natalie Coughlin, Cullen Jones, and Nathan Adrian are global ambassadors for the sport of swimming who define the next level.

    http://youtu.be/7rnn1xLPerQ

  • Disgraced Japanese swimmer Naoya Tomita appeared in a South Korean court Monday on charges of stealing a journalist’s camera at the Asian Games in September.

    Tomita, a gold medallist at the 2010 Asian Games, was booted out of last year’s event in the western port city of Incheon after paying a one million won ($950) fine for the alleged theft.

    In Japan, the 25-year-old was slapped with an 18-month ban by the Japan Swimming Federation.

    Witnesses said Tomita asserted his innocence when he was questioned by a group of journalists outside the court in Incheon.

    Initially he admitted stealing the $7,600 camera after police studied images from closed-circuit TV cameras at the pool in Incheon.

    But he later denied the theft, insisting he had confessed because he feared he would not otherwise be allowed to return home.

    He also claimed an unidentified person had put the camera in his bag.

    Read France24

  • If you have been experiencing painfully longer ping times or hair-pulling latencies in your internet, you might have to blame someone else other than your internet service provider. As it turned out, a shark had been angrily chomping on the underwater cables that ferry data across the continents.

    Over the past two months, ruptures have been appearing in the submerged Asia-America Gateway (AAG) cable system that supplies a huge section of Southeast Asia with its daily dose of internet, reported Science Alert. However, all these seemed trivial in comparison to a hole that was so severe, it brought the majority of internet users in Vietnam to their knees. This hole caused millions of residents of the country to deal with speeds that were similar to dial-up, and a connection that was frustratingly sporadic. […]

    Commissioned and opened for business in 2009, the AAG cable system has been experiencing far too many tears to be considered as mere accidents. Underwater cameras managed to capture the culprit who was having a go at the cables. The shark — drawn by electromagnetic waves, which these cables emit — was attacking them with a strong vengeance. Though the authorities are glad it wasn’t foul play, they are still concerned about how to dissuade the shark from attacking the cables.

    Fortunately, Google came up with a simple, ingenious, and expensive solution to accord protection to the cables. Double-sheathing the cables with the same material that goes into making bullet-proof vests – Kevlar – now protects them from being damaged by the shark.

    See Inquistr

    http://youtu.be/XMxkRh7sx84