Swimmer's Daily

  • 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

  • Members of the veterans service organization Wounded Warrior Project took a detour during an annual South Florida bike ride to swim with the dolphins.

    Dozens of veterans spent the day at the Dolphin Research Center in Marathon on Saturday. They has the opportunity to learn some training techniques before joining the animals in the water.

    “It was like giving a puppy to a roomful of kids. We all just wanted to touch it, play with it,” said Wounder Warrior Neil Boekel. “We just wanted its attention as much as it wanted ours. It’s kind of funny; we all just turned into big goobers, playing with the dolphin in the water, really.”

    See WSVN-TV

    WSVN-TV – 7NEWS Miami Ft. Lauderdale News, Weather, Deco

  • We had 35 dippers show up this year (up from about 25 last year, it keeps growing!)… and about the same number of supporters as dippers. Of course, by supporters I mean friends and relatives that were too sane to dip… but weren’t going to miss a chance for a good laugh!

    See L.O.S.T Swimming

    http://youtu.be/5GXvBvV66tk

  • It was in November when CBS 3 first told you Anna Strzempko’s story of alleged rape.

    “I remember once Anna told me it was like cocaine, she would do anything for his approval,” her mother Monica Strzempko told CBS 3 in November.

    They were words from a mother desperate to get her daughter’s alleged story of rape into the public eye after years of what she described as being ostracized from a swimming organization her daughter once loved so much.

    On the other side, there’s 61-year-old Randy Smith – a former swim coach at the Holyoke YMCA for three decades who denies any allegations of sexual misconduct.

    According to Anna Strzempko’s mother, in 2011 when Anna was 16 and dramatically losing weight and isolating herself, she came forward with allegations of rape against Smith saying that between between 2008 and 2010 she had been sexually abused by him anywhere from six to 10 times.

    Reports would be filed over the next three years with the Department of Children and Families, USA Swimming and Holyoke police, but charges were never brought forth.

    Finally, on Nov.17, 2014, years after the initial accusations, Smith and Anna Strzempko’s testimony unfolded before an independent national review board, charged with finding out whether there was enough evidence to ban Smith from the sport.

    CBS 3 obtained the board’s official findings.

    In a 2-1 vote released this week, the panel members found they did not have enough to bar Smith from coaching in the sport.

    CBS3 Springfield

    CBS 3 Springfield – WSHM