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.”
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.
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€.
Birkerød, Denmark. Tonight, Sigma Swim arranged a fun and spectator friendly “War Of The Great Danes,” in connection with their annual sponsor event.
Six of the best Danish male swimmers competed in an elimination challenge, consisting of five rounds of 50 meter sprints, starting every 3 minutes. The swim stroke was decided by luck of the draw; and after each round, the slowest swimmer was eliminated. […]
In the end, it was Faroese born Magnus Jakupsson who proved the strongest, winning the final against London 2012 Olympian Daniel Skaaning. Magnus is Danish champion in the 50, 100 and 200 backstroke, and Danish record holder in the 50 backstroke, which undoubtedly was helpful when the last draw turned out to be backstroke. But Skaaning still holds the Danish junior record in the 100 backstroke, and is known as a fighter, making the duel quite even until Magnus hit the wall in 25.46 to Daniel’s 25.93 (short course meters).
Daniel and Magnus psyching themselves for those fun, last 50 meters
Round 1: Butterfly – Anton Orskov Ipsen eliminated (2014 Europeans and 2014 World Short Course qualified)
Round 2: Freestyle – Claus Iversen eliminated (five times 2013 World Masters Champion)
Round 3: Breaststroke – Andreas Schiellerup eliminated (2013 European Short Course Semi-Finalist in the 50 backstroke)
Round 4: Breaststroke – Daniel Steen Andersen eliminated (2013 European Junior Champion in the 100 butterfly, 2014 Europeans and 2014 World Short Course qualified)
Round 5: Backstroke – Daniel Skaaning eliminated (London 2012 Olympian, 2011 European Juniors silver medalist and 2010 European Juniors bronze medalist in the 200 freestyle, 2014 Europeans and 2014 World Short Course qualified)
Much to the disappointment of those hoping for an action replay of the heady summer of 2012, the International Olympic Committee has rejected as “totally unfeasible” claims that London could step in for troubled Rio to host the 2016 Olympics.
A report in the London Evening Standard has claimed that the capital had been secretly sounded out as a last-ditch replacement for Rio, whose preparations were damned as the “worst ever” by an IOC vice-president last month.
But the suggestion was immediately knocked down by the IOC in the strongest terms.
“This is simply a non-starter – totally without foundation and totally unfeasible. Not a shred of truth,” said a spokeswoman. Another IOC source said the story was “total rubbish”.
We recently brought you the news that the Baths’ training pool will reopen at the venue next month, and events like Hamlet are designed to help reinvigorate the building and remind people of its potential.
Mr Downie said: “We’ve got a lot planned here to help regenerate and restore the building. Hamlet and other plays like this will hopefully create interest in the building as a community and arts centre.
“We want to restore the pools, but also make it so much more than that. Plays like Hamlet allow us to remind people of what is possible with the building and let them know we’re still open and still fighting.â€
The third body from a Virginia hot-air balloon crash was recovered this morning, making it a certainty that Natalie M. Lewis, a record-setting swimmer from Buffalo’s Nardin Academy, was among those who died in the disaster.
Lewis, who went on to star in college competition, had been missing and presumed dead after the horrific accident Friday night that was witnessed by hundreds of onlookers in central Virginia.
Strapped in with a five-point harness, and crammed into a space hardly bigger than me, I was comfortable, actually, and so off we went. Down, toward the edge of darkness.
It was a gorgeous Thursday earlier this month, and I was sitting in the rear seat in the DeepFlight SuperFalcon, a two-person submersible designed to “fly” the world’s oceans.
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