Swimmer's Daily

  • Double Olympic finallist Jemma Lowe has had her funding cut by British Swimming.

    The governing body has announced its 2015 performance squads for Podium and Podium Potential athletes who will receive direct support from UK Sport through the World Class Performance Programme.

    Sixty-four athletes across Podium (21) and Podium Potential (43) will receive targeted financial assistance through an Athlete Personal Award (APA) in addition to training camp and competition opportunities, sports science and medicine services, and the support of British Swimming World Class Programme staff.

    Commonwealth Games gold medallist Jazz Carlin and Georgia Davies are joined by Glasgow medallists Daniel Jervis and Callum Jarvis in the podium squad, while Chloe Tutton, Ellena Jones and Tom Allen are the Welsh trio in the podium potential band.

    But there will be no help for Lowe who has reached Olympic finals at Beijing and London. The butterfly expert used to be based in Swansea but has now relocated to Bath.

    Lowe failed to win a Commonwealth medal in Glasgow but was part of the Great Britain 4x100m mixed medley team who won a European gold and set a world record in Berlin in August.

    Read WalesOnline

  • Sir Ranulph Fiennes yesterday urged British businesses to “dig deep” and support a man’s historic attempt to swim across the Atlantic Ocean.

    The celebrated adventurer said West Country swimmer Ben Hooper’s 2,000-mile challenge would be “tough beyond imagination” and that it deserved the backing of major organisations.

    Sir Ranulph, widely regarded as the world’s greatest living explorer and the only man to have travelled around the earth’s circumpolar surface, said the gruelling feat is among “one of the last great bastions of exploration to remain unconquered”.

    Sir Ranulph, who is patron of Mr Hooper’s “Swim the Big Blue” expedition, fears the record-breaking journey may be scuppered before it has begun unless more sponsors come forward.

    Speaking from his home in Somerset, he said: “Make no mistake that this swim is, in my view, one of the last great bastions of exploration to remain unconquered.

    “But sadly, even the best-laid plans, training regimes and meticulous planning can come unstuck if they lack ongoing, monetary support from the outset.

    “It’s my sincere hope that businesses large and small dig deep to safeguard the future of this remarkable challenge.”

    Read Western Daily Press

    http://youtu.be/UTY6cA8GI7Q

  • Swimming Australia have called a crisis meeting with their athletes because the sport has blown their budget and can’t afford to pay the swimmers up to $300,000 worth of performance bonus entitlements.

    Australia’s success in the pool in 2014, where they finished as virtual world No.1, exceeded the expectations of their own bosses so much that they can’t afford to deliver the financial rewards promised in team agreements.

    In a revelation that will shock the lowly paid swimmers, high-performance boss Michael Scott will tell them in the next week his high-performance budget has been exhausted and they can’t afford to pay their full entitlement of bonuses for a breakout year in the pool.

    The outstanding bonus debts equate to about $288,000, which is a small drop in the ocean for SAL’s annual revenue of $26m, but raises questions about how money was spent in the past 12 months given last year’s annual report showed almost $4m in cash reserves in the bank.

    Leading Brisbane sprinter Cate Campbell could be left $40,000 out of pocket with the top 10 leading swimmers in the team all facing five figure shortfalls in bonuses.

    Read Courier Mail

    Photo by HoskingIndustries

  • Commonwealth and European champion Jazz Carlin has yet to decide on her future coaching set-up.

    Carlin’s success in Glasgow and Berlin was achieved despite coach Bud McAllister moving to Australia.

    The 24-year-old, who said it has been ‘tough’ without a coach, had been expected to have settled things last month.

    “I haven’t 100% decided what I’ll be doing in the next couple of months,” she said.

    “I’ll be competing in the World Short Course Championships in December and I’ll make a decision in the next few weeks.”

    Read BBC Sport

     

  • An interesting read here on The Digital Universe

    Packed football stadiums and stuffed bleachers at a basketball game are a common sight, but swim meets fall into a separate category of popularity.

    There must be some explanation for the empty bleachers and lack of general fame, but one of the highest viewed sports in the Olympics is one of the less popular sports in the country, especially on the collegiate level. Grantland Reality TV Fantasy League writer Bill Simmons said Olympic swimming is one of the most-watched Olympic sports.

    The 2012 Olympic Swim Trials were often held in front of sell-out crowds, or 18,975 full seats in the audience.

    This contrast to the lack of excitement and public swim and dive support in the country begs the question of why audiences are only interested in swim and dive when the Olympics roll around.

    Read the 5 reasons suggested here on The Digital Universe

    Photo by lorenkerns

  • Swimming legend Dawn Fraser returns to Tokyo for the 50th Anniversary of the 1964 Olympic Games. At these Games Fraser won her third consecutive gold medal in the 100m Freestyle.

  • Define Men Aqua Wax ad featuring Norway’s Olympian Lavrans Solli. Via simma.nu/no

    http://youtu.be/BR6q0nFUsIY

  • It has to have consequences if Danish national team swim coaches in the future quit prematurely, says Team Danmark.

    Team Danmark will not accept any more premature resignations from coaches of the Danish swimmers, says CEO Michael Andersen after Shannon Rollason quit his job at the Danish Swimming Federation a year and a half before time.

    “Team Danmark can not live with the fact that we can get burned off like this. We support Danish swimming with more than 8 million Danish kroner (USD 1.35 million) each year”, says Michael Andersen.

    Shannon Rollason is head coach of the Danish national training center, in charge of swim stars like Jeanette Ottesen, Rikke Møller Pedersen and Pernille Blume. His contract was until the summer of 2016, when he was thought of as a key role at the Olympics in Rio. Rollason, however, has terminated his contract, and will go back to Australia after the World Short Course Championships in December. The reason is that his family is unhappy in Denmark.

    “It has to have a price to resign. We will not stand for such a situation again. Therefore, we have to require the new coach to think twice before running off. First, we must be even better to ensure ownership of the project towards 2016, and secondly, it has to have a price if you still choose to stop. This is quite normal when you bind yourself to a contract,” says Michael Andersen.

    The Sports Manager of the Danish Swimming Federation, Mikkel von Seelen, understands Michael Andersen’s frustration with the termination. He believes, however, that it is difficult to tie a future coach more that was done with Shannon Rollason.

    “In swimming we don’t licenses like in football, where you can tie people to a contract.

    The Danish Swimming Federation neither owns swimmers or swimmers like that, and have absolutely no intentions to do that. We hire people in normal salaried employment. We can not tie people to the job, but we can give some incentives to stay,” says Mikkel von Seelen.

    One of the things that the Danish Swimming Federation can do in the future, is to adjust the conditions for terminating the contract. But Mikkel von Seelen still thinks that it would not have solved the problem of Shannon Rollason.

    “When you do not thrive because of family reasons, I will not be the man to stand in the way of it. I do not think that anything good comes out of forcing people to stay. We are firstly not able to do that, and secondly I do not think that the end result would be good,” says Mikkel von Seelen.

    Mikkel von Seelen doesn’t think that the problem with Shannon Rollason was lack of ownership of the project leading up til the Rio Olympics. But on the other han, he agrees with the CEO of Team Danmark, Michael Andersen, that they now have to find a coach who is guaranteed to last until 2016.

    “Shannon was among the world’s best coaches, and that is what we need again. We are going to have 4-5 medal candidates at the Olympic Games in Rio, so their sparring needs to be top-notch. I am convinced that we will find the right one. Very few countries can offer swimmers at this level. We are in the top five of the women, so we have a very attractive squad,” says Michael Andersen.

    Read Jyllands-posten (in Danish, here translated probably badly with the help of Google Translate)

  • Chloe McCardel talks about her upcoming attempt to swim 128kms between islands in the Bahamas.

    http://youtu.be/TNQGBSUozUk