Swimmer's Daily

  • Short-course 1500m world champion Spain’s Mireia Belmonte broke the discipline world record by almost three seconds at her national swimming championships on Friday.

    The new mark of 15 minutes 19.71 seconds, set during the Spanish short-course championships at Sabadell, takes over from New Zealander Lauren Boyle’s previous world record mark of 15min 22.68sec.

    Belmonte won four titles at the recent Doha 2014 short-course worlds with gold in the 200m butterfly, 400m medley (where she won both in world record times) and also the 400m and 800m freestyle.

    Read SBS

  • Two scientists have broken the record for the longest time spent living underwater, as of 11:28 a.m. EST today.

    The biologists, Bruce Cantrell and Jessica Fain, have spent nearly 10 weeks in Jules’ Undersea Lodge, which bills itself as “the only undersea hotel on Earth” and is located just off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. …

    Cantrell and Fain, respectively a biology professor and biology instructor at Roane State Community College in eastern Tennessee, decided to live underwater to learn more about marine biology and educate students about the ocean. They’ve hosted a series of weekly educational videos, all available on YouTube, about their time living underwater, which they’ve dubbed Classroom Under the Sea.

    The videos are aimed at teachers and students from middle school and older. The trip was funded by the college and other groups, and its official sponsor is Diversity in Aquatics, an organization devoted to “decreasing the rate of drowning deaths worldwide” and teaching people about water safety.

  • The 2014 Nordic Swim Champs have just started in Upplands Väsby near Stockholm in Sweden, with start lists here, live video streaming here on livetiming.se, live results here and listed results here. See also the event landing page here.

    nordic2014

  • Ocean Gravity is a short film that rewrite the rules of the underwater world and takes us this time into the world of the weightlessness.

  • World (25m) Champion & two-time European 1500m Freestyle Champion, Gregorio Paltrinieri puts the new arena Cobra Ultra goggles through their paces.

  • Chinese swimming star Sun Yang’s Australian coach said he felt sorry for the double Olympic champion after it emerged he had served a doping ban, telling media Thursday the athlete was “let down”.

    Denis Cotterell made his comments after Australian swimming authorities barred the 1,500 metres world record-holder from training in the country’s pools in the wake of the high-profile drugs case.

    Sun served a three-month penalty after testing positive for the banned stimulant trimetazidine in May. He completed his ban on August 17, but it was only revealed by Chinese authorities last month.

    Cotterell told Chinese state news agency Xinhua that he was disappointed for Sun and that he “feel(s) for him personally”.

    “His situation is most unfortunate, and I definitely don’t hold him to any blame,” he said.

    “While only knowing the circumstances as outlined in the various press and media outlets, I feel he’s been let down.”

    Read SBS

  • On Christmas Day 1885 a few hardy souls hobbled across Brighton’s pebbly beach and into the chilly English Channel.

    That first Brighton Christmas Day swim has become a much-copied ritual around the world. But this year it’s been called off. And it seems unlikely the event, which has always been run by the Brighton Swimming Club, will ever be coming back.

    Brighton & Hove City Council – supported by the swimming club – says it’s become too dangerous. It will close off the beach around the Palace Pier to dissuade people from entering the water on Christmas Day.

    “Sea swimming takes skill, stamina and knowledge of the physical dangers and should only be for the very experienced, using suitable wetsuits, in very calm conditions and with a friend,” says the council’s seafront manager Chris Ingall. The council says it has no plans to bring the swim back in future years.

    Read BBC News

    christmas swim photo
    Photo by frvherreweghe

  • The Christmas Day swim on Brighton beach, a tradition for 150 years, is cancelled over health and safety fears.

    A traditional Christmas Day swim on Brighton beach has been cancelled over health and safety fears, following increasing levels of drunkenness in recent years.

    In the past, the “Santa swim” has been called off due to particularly harsh weather conditions or high tides.

    This year, however, Brighton and Hove city council has taken the decision to cancel the event regardless of sea conditions, after growing increasingly concerned for the safety of members of the public, many of them in fancy dress, who join seasoned swimmers for the annual dip.

    The council said it would be closing parts of the beach on Dec 25 to deter people from taking part.

    Health and safety officials fear a repeat of an incident in October, when a swimmer had to be rescued after getting into difficulty near the pier.

    They also cited the death of a Hastings woman who died during a Christmas Day swim in 2012.

    http://youtu.be/UkrhcL3MhjA

  • The Marine Combat Instructor of Water Survival course is a grueling training evolution that requires Marines to swim a total of 59 miles over three weeks. The course that graduated on Nov. 25 started with nine participants, but only six were able to complete the challenge. One of those six had the deck stacked against him from the beginning but overcame adversity and graduated with his classmates.

    Staff Sgt. Adam Jacks, company gunnery sergeant for Headquarters and Service Company at The Basic School, is a motivated, extremely fit, infantry Marine who said he quickly volunteered to attend the course when approached by the chief instructor trainer, Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Marshall. The fact that Jacks’s right leg was amputated at the mid-thigh in 2011 did not faze either Marine.

    Read Marines

    Photo By: Maj. Eve Baker / Marines