Read Charlotte Observer
SwimMAC Carolina head coach David Marsh follows an unconventional training path that could help change the sport of swimming.
A half-century of tradition has had swimmers in the pool by 5Â a.m. to swim hundreds of laps daily.
But Marsh doesn’t think it’s important to spend hours in the pool each day, amassing laps.
He’s among a coaching vanguard who believe athletes benefit by swimming fewer laps at a faster pace. Intensity matters.
The Faroe Islands Swimming Association is today hosting the annual Nordic Congress and Board Meeting, in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands. On the agenda is among other things the formal inclusion of the Estonian Swimming Federation as full member of the Nordic Swimming Federation, and rule changes proposed by the Nordic General Secretary and Sports Director Meeting in Stockholm in January.
So there, Faroese brand Sirri has launched a smart wool jumper named after long distance swimmer Pál Joensen, the profit going to the 50 meter pool that is being built in Pál’s (and Sirri’s) hometown of Vágur, Faroe Islands. Lucky Danes can buy the jumper at the Frigg Festival in Copenhagen, this weekend, for the laughable cheap price of DKK 950 (remember, this is real, non-synthetic, viking wool)
(Pál and girlfriend Malan Vitalis Bærendsen)
Read SBS
Disappointing performances by Australia’s swimmers at the 2012 London Olympics might have been partly due to a poor understanding of the history and strong traditions of their predecessors.
Olympic historian Harry Gordon believes a better knowledge of the spirit of Australian teams at past Games might have helped prevent the internal ruptures in London that left the swimmers bringing home only one gold medal, from the 4x100m women’s freestyle relay.
“A lack of respect for the past converted into a lack of inspiration,” Gordon said at the launch of his latest book From Athens With Pride – The Official History of the Australian Olympic Movement 1894-2014.
Gordon, the Australian Olympic Committee’s (AOC) official historian since 1992, quoted late friend and AFL coaching great Allan Jeans: “To know where you are going, you need to know where you have been.”
Read The Age
A couple of days before Kyle Chalmers was due to flew to Sydney for the national age swimming championships this year, the 15-year-old decided to go to a high school football training and “have a kick with the lads”. Chalmers, the son of former Crows and Power ruckman, Brett Chalmers, returned from the session, with a cracked index finger on his right hand when the ball hit it awkwardly.
After he finished competing at the meet, which he took part in after defying initial medical opinion that he should rest for up to eight weeks – he became the latest promising junior swimming star to be lumped with the label of the “next Ian Thorpe”.
http://youtu.be/wd4eqL5u6QQ
Read Sports Illustrated
After Ryan Lochte won five more medals at the 2012 Summer Games, bringing his grand total of Olympic hardware to 11, the media couldn’t get enough of the brawny swimmer—and vice versa. Photos of a shirtless Lochte started popping up all over the Internet, People magazine named him to its “Sexiest Man Alive†list, and E!even inked a deal with the swimmer for his own reality TV show, What Would Ryan Lochte Do?, which premiered last spring.
But those days are all over now, says Lochte, who ended his brief stint with reality TV after one season and remains adamant we won’t see him racing royalty in Las Vegas pools at three in the morning again any time soon. (The swimmer did indeed once race Prince Harry in a now-infamous incident outside a Vegas club in 2012.) “No, you won’t see any of that anymore,†says Lochte of the early-morning matchup, which we assume the three-time Olympian won. “Especially when it’s two years out from the Olympics.â€
Photo by firetwink 
More than 30 individuals gathered on Thursday to hear Michael Holtz, an openly gay swimmer and LGBT activist, talk about the “reinventions†in his life and LGBT issues in athletics.
Holtz, who was Rainbow Alliance’s Spring Speaker, began his talk by describing his life in high school in Naples, Florida. He said although he was very active and successful in high school, he didn’t feel happy with his life.
“People would accept me not because I was gay and successful, but rather they would overlook the fact that I was gay because I was successful,†Holtz said.
Below is an interview with Holtz from back in 2010
Read The Telegraph. And jeez.
So worried are Olympic organisers by how far behind schedule the 2016 Rio Games has fallen, London has reportedly been asked, in secret, if it could host the event at the last minute.
According to the London Evening Standard, an informal approach has been made by IOC chiefs to ascertain whether London’s 2012 Olympic venues could be brought back into use. […]
Photo by S. Reachers
