Swimmer's Daily

  • Three men are $30,000 closer to achieving their goal of building a natural swimming hole in the center of the city.

    The Houston Needs a Swimming Hole! Kickstarter page has surpassed its $30,000 goal with three days left to donate. Jeff Kaplan and his partners are on their way to create a natural escape in an urban environment.

    “It is so hot here, and there aren’t a lot of outs,” Kaplan said. “Unless you live in a fancy new apartment building or have a pool at your house, you don’t have a lot of options to jump in a body of water unless you drive to Galveston.”

    See ABC13

  • Onlookers were expecting a shark when lifeguards blew warning whistles, but instead the 1.5-metre snake made its way to the shore from between the flags at the beach at Forster.

    Cape Hawke Surf Lifesaving Club president Paul Scott said it was unusual for a brown snake to be at the beach.

    “It’s odd to see a snake which is a land-dwelling creature at the beach,” he said.

    “You see the odd sea snake in the water, but a brown snake is quite unusual. You see snakes around the beach but not in the water.”

    While beachgoers may have been shocked by the snake, it did not cause any harm, Mr Scott added.

    “No lives were lost,” he said. “No lives were in danger.”

    Mr Scott also said he was impressed that the snake knew where to swim.

    “It was doing the right thing and swimming between the flags,” he said.

    Read ABC

  • How sexist is the US Senate? So far, only 44 women have ever served as Senators, meaning, according to this Politico article examining the gender imbalance in the upper house, the male Senators think they have the entire place to themselves — including the Senate pool, where they apparently swim with each other while naked.

    This mind-searing anecdote comes courtesy of Sen. Kay Hagan (R-NC), who discovered this fact as a freshman Senator in 2008. According to the story, she was told that the Senate swimming pool was males-only, “because some of the male senators liked to swim naked.”

    A spokeswoman for the Senate gym told a North Carolina paper at the time that the pool was open to everyone, but according to Politico, it seemed to be an informal rule that only exposed penises were allowed to bathe in the cool Senate waters:

    It took an intervention by Senator Chuck Schumer, head of the Rules Committee, to put a stop to the practice, but even then “it was a fight,” remembers pollster Celinda Lake, who heard about the incident when the pool revolt was the talk among Washington women.

    Read MEDIAite

  • On 2 October 2009, when Rio de Janeiro was elected to host the Games, the great explosion of joy amongst Brazilians was felt by nature and from this energy the mascots were born.

  • In this month’s episode we bring you an update on the 2014 season of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. We’ll meet up with French swimmer Jeremy Stravius. And we follow the FINA NVC Diving World Series.

  • In this month’s episode we’ll meet up with Brazilian swim star Cesar Cielo Filho. We bring you an update from the FINA Water Polo World League and we head to Austin for the US Grand Prix.

  • In this month’s episode we meet up with Water Polo superstar Jennifer Pareja, we zoom in on British Water Polo, plus we get all the action from the USA Winter National Championships!

  • In this month’s episode we’ll zoom in on the FINA Synchronized Swimming World Trophy 2013 in Mexico. Being aware in the air; we get an insight into Cliff Diving but first let’s look back at the highlights from the FINA Swimming World Cup.

  • A National Geographic researcher is startled to see a Greenland shark where none has ever been seen before: off Russia’s Franz Josef Land. An underwater camera captured images of the shark, a species scientists know very little about.