Swimmer's Daily

  • “Take off your clothes,” a foreign voice said over the loudspeaker – slowly, rhythmically, emphasising each syllable. “Get into the water.”

    It was not the kind of voice you disobey. So although I was on the Arctic circle, surrounded by ice and snow on all sides, I got in. Technically, the 25-metre pool was in a river, although even at a time of year when temperatures rise and daylight increases, the ice it was cut into was thick enough to drive snowmobiles across. This was the moment I had been training for the past six months: the 50-metre men’s freestyle event at the World Winter Swimming Championships (WWSC) in Rovaniemi, Finnish Lapland.

    Read The Guardian

    http://youtu.be/LOjqVdMKBfk

  • Who needs coffee as a pick me up when you can jump into freezing cold water?

    That was the case at the annual Polar Plunge in Peoria at Sunrise Pool Saturday morning.

    It’s more than just about swimming in a pool that hasn’t been heated since November.

    Everyone at the event donated money to go toward free swimming lessons for city youth.

    That’s important for a state where drowning is the number one cause of death for kids under the age of four.

    See abc15

  • Developed by Belgian engineering graduate Alec Momont, it can fly at speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour (60 miles per hour).

    “Around 800,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest in the European Union every year and only 8.0 percent survive,” Momont, 23, said at the TU Delft University.

    “The main reason for this is the relatively long response time of emergency services of around 10 minutes, while brain death and fatalities occur with four to six minutes,” he said in a statement.

    “The ambulance drone can get a defibrillator to a patient within a 12 square kilometre (4.6 square miles) zone within a minute, reducing the chance of survival from 8 percent to 80 percent.”

    See for instance Yahoo! News, Slate, CNET and of course TUDelft

  • http://vimeo.com/115826587

  • Much in the same way Jaws made people scared to traverse the ocean’s waters and Psycho made people wary of staying in roadside motels run by insane murderers, Ghoulies caused me fear-imbued trips to the toilet as a child. After seeing this video, my nightmares have become a reality, and I have to — once again — resort to wearing diapers.

    See Uproxx

    Photo by Furryscaly

  • Gold medal swimmer Missy Franklin made a young woman’s holiday wish come true on Tuesday.

    Franklin visited a cancer patient at Rocky Mountain Hospital For Children.

    Rebecca Carcaterra was in the middle of her sophomore year of college when a tumor was found in her shoulder this October. She was diagnosed with a very rare and aggressive bone cancer.

    Carcaterra has been a competitive swimmer since she was 6 years old and has always looked up to Franklin. So when Carcaterra’s father sent a letter asking Franklin to visit, she was happy to say yes.

    See CBS Denver

  • Hempfield Area High School’s swim team lost its captain Tuesday, a senior described as an accomplished and popular athlete and scholar.

    Judson Shiffler, 18, of West Hempfield died Tuesday morning in UPMC Presbyterian hospital in Pittsburgh from injuries suffered when his car crashed into a hillside Monday, according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office.

    High school Principal Kathy Charlton called Shiffler a “solid, really great young man.”

    Read TribLive and see WTAE

  • A young man who died trying to jump from a light pole into a Gisborne swimming pool had spent the afternoon playing football and enjoying a few drinks with friends.

    The 20-year-old had been at his friend’s family home in Lytton West when he attempted the fatal jump from a tennis court light pole.

    “My wife and I were here until just before the incident actually happened,” the property owner, who did not want to be identified, said.

    “There were about 20 of them just having a few pre-drinks before going to Rhythm & Vines. They were my son’s friends.

    Read The New Zealand Herald

  • camren-mitzel

    A former Ashland High School volunteer swim coach convicted last year of having a sexual relationship with an underage team member is headed to prison after reconnecting with her over the Internet and trying to lure her to Georgia.

    Camren Mitzel, 26, pleaded guilty Monday in Jackson County Circuit Court to second-degree online sexual corruption of a child and violating his probation. He was sentenced to 40 months in prison and three years’ post-prison supervision, according to Deputy District Attorney Terry Smith-Norton.

    An original charge of first-degree online sexual corruption of a child was dismissed, court records show.

    Read Mail Tribune