See for instance MailOnline
More than 60 swimmers have been injured in a mass piranha attack.
The victims, including more than 20 children, were bitten by the shoal of meat-eating fish in Argentina.
A seven-year-old girl lost part of a finger and other swimmers suffered deep cuts to their ankles, fingers and hands.
Image courtesy of Marcelo Jorge Vieira, CC BY 2.0
Read ChinaDaily
Chinese Olympic champion Sun Yang arrived at a natatorium in Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan in southwest China, on Thursday afternoon to resume altitude training on the plateau.
Sun arrived at Kunming Tianyi sports center with members of the Zhejiang provincial swimming team at around 4 p.m. and began training.
Sun has been suspended from the national team following a recent detention for driving without a license.
Sun has not returned to training for the national team and there has been no timetable set for his return, according to the Zhejiang provincial swimming team.
Read key103
Sharks in Western Australia swimming close to popular beaches are using Twitter to send warning messages to surfers and swimmers.
The unique project means beach goers can make an informed decision about whether to go in the water knowing a shark is nearby.
Scientists have attached transmitters to more than 320 sharks, including great whites, which monitor their movements up and down the coast.
When a tagged shark swims within about a kilometre of a beach, it triggers an alert which is picked up by computer. That computer then instantly turns the shark’s signal into a short message on Surf Life Saving Western Australia’s (SLSWA) Twitter feed.
Fisheries advise: tagged Tiger shark detected at Mullaloo South receiver at 03:13:00 AM on 28-Dec-2013
— Surf Life Saving WA (@SLSWA) December 27, 2013
Read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While many stayed well fed and warm inside this Christmas, dozens of hardy swimmers braved the cold in Berlin and London on Wednesday, to take part in annual Christmas Day swims.
Around 40 people dressed in Santa costumes gathered at Oranke lake in Berlin to conquer the 41-degree Farenheit water.
The tradition, founded in 1984, has been kept alive by members of the Berlin Seals Club.
Hoping for even colder weather and ice, the Berlin seals will meet again on New Years day.In London’s Hyde Park, swimmers took to the waters for the traditional annual 100-metre race.
The race is a long standing tradition of the Serpentine Swimming Club, with the first recorded session taking place 146 years ago. The race took place in the Serpentine, a recreational lake in the center of the park.
The 26-year-old distance freestyler lives in Whenuapai, having returned after flourishing in swimming and business studies at the University of California. She was looking forward to her holiday break – all three days of it – when the Herald caught up with her at the North Shore’s Millennium Institute. Apart from that, it is full steam ahead, with her major targets the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and Pan Pacific Games on the Gold Coast next year.
Q&A
Can you sum up your year? Fantastic. I’ve had more exposure to different coaches and environments. People know the coaching changes in NZ swimming and there have been major adjustments. I’m proud to have achieved what I did in tough circumstances. A few magazines and articles called the 1500m race at Barcelona the best of the year because the girls who finished one and two were under the previous world record and I was only 2s away.
Read thejournal.ie
Everyone’s got their theory about how best to prepare for the plunge (usually involving tots of rum or whiskey), and the best way to regain a regular human temperature afterwards (again with the whiskey). But what’s the official advice? We got on to the folks at Irish Water Safety — here’s what they told us…
- If you’re organising a charity swim, make sure to give the details to your local Coast Guard unit and gardaà first.
- Appoint a ‘safety officer’ to oversee the event, and who will have the ultimate responsibility for deciding if the swim can go ahead.
- Don’t take a chance on running the swim if the weather deteriorates — defer it to a different day.
- It is a fallacy that alcohol will keep you warm when entering the water; in fact it has the reverse effect and could well kill you. IWS says it “strongly recommends that no alcohol be taken either before the swim or after the swimâ€.
- “Make sure you have safe access and exit points from the waterâ€â€¦ In other words, don’t thoughtlessly throw yourself into the sea without a plan for how to get out!
- And the final word of advice: “Swimmers’ remaining in the water for extended periods in a gesture of bravado is not acceptable. The message is ‘Get In, Get Out and Warm Up’.â€
Image courtesy of Tim Parkinson, CC BY 2.0
With temperatures around to around 3C (37.4F), more than 250 swimmers stripped down to brave the freezing pool.
The water registered at 6.5C (43.7F), surprising colder than last year’s 7C (44.6F) considering the clear skies and sunny weather.
Famous names took to the pool, including Gloucester Rugby’s Dan Murphy and Cheltenham mayor Wendy Flynn.
The mayor was raising money for three charities, including Hester’s Way Neighbourhood Project, Victim Support and Cheltenham Animal Shelter.
She said: “It’s freezing, I don’t think I will be doing that again next year.
See Channel 4
Covering the news on Christmas Day is always challenging – and was equally so in 1965 when ITN sent their roving reporter John Shearer to Hyde Park to interview [and join] the regular Serpentine race swimmers.
“To go across to Siberia for a winter swimming race and compete against swimmers from South Africa, USA, Estonia and South America was amazing,†he said.
“I have done a lot of cold water swimming in the Lake District but this was an extension of what I have done before, it was something else.
“It was very hard. When I was swimming I almost felt my body freezing in the water, it was zero degrees with ice forming on the top.