Swimmer's Daily

  • Hong Kong will welcome the international swimming elite for the third leg of the FINA/MASTBANK Swimming World Cup 2014 from September 29-30. Hong Kong, together with Moscow (RUS, October 4-5), constitute the second cluster of the Series.

    A total USD 300’000 is on offer for cluster no.2 and will be distributed to the six highest-ranked swimmers among men and women (USD 150’000 for each category), as well as for cluster no.3 (Beijing, Tokyo and Singapore). At the end of the Series, the men’s and women’s World Cup winner will receive USD 100’000 in prize money, the second-placed USD 50’000 and third-placed USD 30’000.

    Among men, Olympic champion Chad Le Clos (RSA) currently leads the overall rankings with 120 points, closely followed by Hungary’s Daniel Gyurta (116 points). Australian Thomas Fraser-Holmes completes the top-3 with 93 points.

    Two-time World Cup winner Katinka Hosszu (HUN) tops the women’s general standings with an outstanding 355 points. Dutch Inge Dekker is runner-up with 126 points while Alia Atkinson of Jamaica is third with 87 points.

    A total six World and 10 World Cup records have been set in this year’s Series so far.

    The FINA/MASTBANK Swimming World Cup can be followed through live streaming of finals on FINAtv and a live info feed at www.fina.org.

    Full calendar of FINA Swimming World Cup 2014:

    Cluster no.1:
    August 27-28, Doha (QAT)
    August 31 – September 1, Dubai (UAE)

    Cluster no.2:
    September 29-30, Hong Kong (HKG)
    October 4-5, Moscow (RUS)

    Cluster no.3:
    October 24-25, Beijing (CHN)
    October 28-29, Tokyo (JPN)
    November 1-2, Singapore (SIN)

    Press release from FINA

    Hot Links

    – News
    – Results
    – Media Book

    Image courtesy of deepbluemedia.eu

  • Why take a risk at 60?

    At this ripe age, Barney Heller decided he wanted to honor his late friend Doug by doing something extraordinary. Attempt an 11-mile open water swim from Spain to Morocco.

    Barney Heller has been swimming all of his life. It’s the only sport he was ever good at. On the swim team at Bucknell University, he met his friend and fellow swimmer, Doug Drayton. When Barney learned two years ago that Doug died from a rare disease called Frontotemporal Degeneration, it shook him to his core. Barney thought he would honor him the only way he knew how – swimming.

    Greg Heller, his son and a documentary filmmaker, learned of this and decided to start capturing his father’s training. “It’s a rare thing for a 60 year old to take a risk,” Greg says.  “And to do it for someone else, was honestly a bit out of character for my dad. I wanted to capture the changes he was going through as he faced aging, grieving, and attempting the hardest swim of his life.”

    The documentary, Swimming the Strait, is currently in post production, and set to be finished in 2015. Visit the Swimming the Strait website, Facebook, and Twitter page to learn more and stay updated.

  • A new vision of the sensations and emotions in the oceans. 4′ video WINNER in World ShootOut 2014 Video clip category underwater grand prix. Just camera tricks. No special effects by computer.

  • Specifically Katinka Hosszu’s 100 and 200 meter individual medley short course world records, and Daniel Gyurta’s 200 meter breaststroke short course world records.

  • Last Sunday night, a powerful wave capsized Zack Romanak’s boat off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Romanak, his 10-year-old son Noah, and Brad Warren, a tourist from California they had met earlier that day, clung to the boat for nearly four hours in dark waters. The impact of the wave had snapped Warren’s femur in three places and broke his prosthetic hip, according to local news site The Garden Island.

    Warren was beginning to question if he’d make it, when Noah heard something in the distance. He told the men to listen.

    It was music coming from a party in the harbor; the song “Don’t Stop Believin’” by the ’80s band Journey blared from the speakers. Warren said as he listened, he saw a star shoot through the sky.

    “I saw that shooting star,” Warren told KITV4 News, “and I heard Journey’s song … I felt hat was the Lord saying, ‘You’re gonna be fine.’”

    See The Huffington Post

  • At Atlanta’s Washington Park Pool, Anne Dunivin slowly and gingerly makes her way into the water. She says, “My girls get me to the pool, twice a week. And I swim for at least half a mile. I swim laps, from that end to this end and then back.”

    Anne’s love-affair with the water started a long time ago.

    Born in 1916, just at the tail end of World War I, she grew up during the Great Depression.

    They had no money, no one did. But, at the Grant Park pool, Anne discovered kids under 12 could swim for free before noon. So, by six, she was in the water, almost every day but then she grew up, and life got in the way.

    Dunivin says, “When I married and had three children, and a husband, and a house, to look after, you don’t just say, ‘Oh, I think I’ll go swim.’”

    That would come much later. After the kids were grown and Anne lost her husband, Anne found her way back to the water. She says, “Well, hey, I noticed that older people are swimming!”

    Not just swimming, competing. Dunivin says, “I was interested!”

    So, at the tender age of 93, Anne joined U.S. Master’s Swimming. She says, “I like doing it, I like being competitive.”

    See myfoxatlanta.com

    Atlanta News, Weather, Traffic, and Sports | FOX 5

  • World class athletes, around 2,500 amateur swimmers, and a huge number of supporters and spectators, were part of Scotland’s biggest ever open water swimming event, the Great Scottish Swim.

  • Courtesy of FINA on YouTube, thumbs up from here!

  • A hungry stingray jumps out of the water and onto a man-made ramp, providing these tourists an incredible up-close experience during a trip to Maldives.