Todd Vercoe slogged for three hours through rough seas, thunderstorms, lightning and the threat of sharks.
When he finally reached land he etched “SOS” in the sand with his foot in the hope rescuers would see his plea for help.
It might sound like a scene from a castaway movie but the life-threatening experience was real for the keen sailor, who thought he might not survive the exhausting swim off Northland’s coast on Saturday.
-
-
Naples’ Katie Kramer completes Strait of Gibraltar swim
Read naplesnews.com
Katie Kramer, 21, completed the 7.8 nautical mile, or 8.9 mile, open water swim on Sunday, according to a family friend and the Marshall University Swimming & Diving Facebook page.
-
Sun Yang’s return sets up potential legendary race
Read NBC Olympic Talk
Comparing early season times can be dangerous, but note that Lochte won the 200m free at the Mesa Grand Prix in 1:49.48 on April 25. Lochte finished fourth in the 200m free at the 2012 Olympics and 2013 World Championships and is currently the top rival to Sun as the world’s best swimmer.
France’s Yannick Agnel, who trains with Phelps in Baltimore, is the reigning Olympic and world 200m free champion. Australian Cameron McEvoy owns the fastest time of 2014, 1:45.46.
Sun, who is better in longer distances, won silver in the 200m free at the 2012 Olympics in a national record 1:44.93. He did not swim the 200m free at the 2013 World Championships, where he swept the 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyles.
He did, however, anchor China’s 4x200m free relay team that won bronze. Sun’s split — 1:43.16 — was the second-fastest in history and 1.82 seconds better than the other 31 swimmers, including Lochte and Agnel.
So, when could we see Sun, Phelps and Lochte in the same race?
-
There’s more to chlorine than just swimming pools
Listen to Marketplace
It keeps your pools clean and safe, it’s half of the compound that makes up table salt, and — in its purest form – it can kill you.
And those are only three of the things chlorine can do.
“There are something like 15,000 chlorine-based chemicals that are used in industry,” says the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt.
Photo by paolotrabattoni.it
-
Slow Mo Guys demonstrate Swim Cap Trick in Super Slow Motion
Via Laughing Squid
YouTube team The Slow Mo Guys, comprised of Gavin Free and Daniel Gruchy, have created asuper slow motion video of the “swim cap trick,†in which a swimming cap is applied to a head by being filled with water and dropped from a height. Captured by a Phantom Flex camera at 1,600 FPS, the trick takes a few hilarious tries to get right.
-
It takes a gutsy swimmer to wear this suit
Via Laughing Squid
Black Milk Clothing, a funky clothing company based in Australia, has created “Dem Guts“, a swimsuit that illustrates the anatomy of the human torso.
-
Rikke Møller Pedersen: The experience was taken away from me
Read SwimmingWorld
While many in the Russian swimming community found relief that Yuliya Efimova’s doping ban will end in time for her to make a run at the 2015 World Championships in Kazan, not everyone in Europe is totally happy about the situation.
Rikke Moller Pedersen of Denmark, who now officially stands as the European Short Course Champion in the 200-meter breast at her home nation meet in Herning, is not all that enthusiastic about the outcome.
“It has been hard, that this experience was taken from me,” Pedersen told DR Sporten. “I could have stood in front of my home crowd and sung along to our national anthem, and I cannot get that back. That I get a gold medal now is not the same.”
-
Swimming: the worst job in the sporting world
Read The Sydney Morning Herald
It is actually pretty amazing there is not more former Olympic swimmers snorting coke and ice and Stilnox because if there is a sport tailor-made for producing sociopaths and depressives, it has got to be swimming.
Imagine spending endless hours staring at the bottom of a pool, gulping chlorinated water, churning out 20 kilometres while you obsess about the shitty comment your girlfriend made the night before and the fact every person your age’s idea of a good time doesn’t involve a stopwatch and Laurie Lawrence.
Then you get up the next day at 4am and do it all again. For decades.
Photo by shospace
-
Yuliya Efimova thrown 16-month ban and lifelife to Kazan 2015 World Champs home defence
Read SwimVortex
Yuliya Efimova, of Russia, has been thrown a lifeline to a home World Championships and the defence of two world titles in Kazan next year by a 16-month suspension in the wake of a positive doping test for a steroid.
The ruling, which coincides with the start of the Russian Championships in Moscow, includes acceptance that the banned substance was indeed in the 22-year-old’s body and that she took it. The conclusion notes, however, that she did not intend to cheat and that language issues were at play: she failed to read a product label and that had been “negligentâ€.