Swimmer's Daily

  • Read TVNZ

    Swimming has received a gentle pat on the back from Sport New Zealand chief executive Peter Miskimmin following its improved performance at a pinnacle event.

    After well-documented struggles in and out of the water, swimming won back some admirers at the just-completed world championships in Barcelona.

    The cream of the crop was freestyler Lauren Boyle, with bronze medals in the 400m, 800m and 1500m events. But the full team statistics were five finals appearances and 12 personal bests.

    It is a sport out of the blocks again.

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  • nikolai-borzovTitle says it all, read PostBulletin.com and see fina.org

    FINA says an Estonian anti-doping panel found that Nikolai Borzov gave Anita Stepanenko a drink containing stanozolol “without notifying the swimmer.”

    The Estonian Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel imposed undermentioned sanctions:

    1. Ms Anita Stepanenko (EST) – one (1) year ineligibility starting on July 23, 2013;
    2. Mr Nikolai Borzov (EST) – lifetime ineligibility.

  • Four world records in two events in two days. That. Is. Impressive.

    Tonight at the FINA 2013 World Cup meet in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Hungary’s Katinka Hosszú set a yet another 100 individual medley short course world record, clocking 57.50 where her world record from this morning was 57.73. She also clocked 4:22.18 and new 400 IM World Cup record, the old one Katrhyn Meaklim’s 4:22.88 from November 2009. See the result list here.

    eindhoven2013-women100im-wr-2

  • lucy-watkinsRead swns.com via Arbroath

    14-year-old Lucy Watkins and her grandparents were canoeing off the Devon coast in England, when a dolphin came by and started swimming around their canoes. To their astonishment, the animal dove down and dropped a massive cod next to Lucy, and started nudging it towards the teenager. Unsure still whether the dolphin wanted it for themselves, they scooped it up when the dolphin went down and resurfaced with its own fish, a seabass, and began tucking in. So it was dinner for the family.

  • Engineers at the University of Electro-Communication in Tokyo have developed this amazing touch-sensitive and responsive interface that works in a pool of (cloudy) water, using a Microsoft Kinect depth camera, a projector, a PC, modified speakers and the water surface as touch panel. It is truly immersive, the first really impressive Surface if you catch my drift ;-)

  • Via Jyllands-Posten (in English)

    The pacu is a South American freshwater fish that can grow up to 25 kilos (55 lbs). It is related to the piranha, but is mainly vegetarian and has squarer, straighter molar-like teeth to crush fruit and nuts with. Believed to have been introduced in Papua New Guinea to aid local fishing industry, it is also believed to have killed at least one fisherman, who bled to death after being castrated by it. As Peter Rask Møller from the Natural History Museum of Denmark describes it, “In unclear waters, it can mistakenly go for anything that hangs and dangles. It can crush nuts and has very sharp teeth.”

    pacu

    Now, on 4 August 2013, amateur fisherman Einar Lindgreen caught a 21.5 cm pacu in the Øresund near the Island of Saltholm, just to the east of Copenhagen Airport. A stone’s (or nut’s?) throw away from the very popular Amager beach, that I used to visit all the time while studying in Denmark. Venue of the KMD Ironman Copenhagen event next Sunday. A swim that London 2012 Olympian Daniel Skaaning by the way will be competing in. It is only the second pacu ever caught in Europe, the other one caught near a power plant by the Odra River in Poland in 2002. The experts guess that this pacu can have ended up in the Øresund as the result of someone emptying their aquarium into the sea or nearby stream, as they are sometimes kept as pets.

    But don’t worry, the experts say you should be safe, if you wear shorts and take care to not have anything dangling in murky waters. Fear-mongering me feels very safe, as I am about a thousand miles away from that thing. A nice swim to you all, next Sunday !

    (Image courtesy of Thorke Østergaard / Wikimedia Commons)

  • The view from behind the medal podium at the 15th FINA World Swimming Championships in Barcelona, Spain. Doub, I could have had a photo of Cesar Cielo taking a similar photo just moments before receiving his (I think it was) 50 fly gold medal, but alas, he was too fast.

    The view from the BCN2013 medal podium

  • Wow, she did it again! At the FINA 2013 World Cup meet in Eindhoven this morning, Hungary’s Katinka Hosszú set a new 100 short course meters individual medley world record, clipping the 57.74 world record of Dutch swimmer Hinkelien Schreuder with the slimmest of margin, 57.73 and an exciting final again tonight. See the result list here.

    hosszu-100-im-prelim-world-record

    Here is a video of the swim

  • See BBC

    British Swimming’s national performance director Chris Spice and head coach Bill Furniss insist they can make the changes required to win medals.

    The team claimed just one medal at the recent World Championships in Barcelona – a 50m freestyle bronze for Francesca Halsall.

    It was GB’s lowest medals tally since the 1998 Worlds in Perth, Australia.

    Furniss said: “It’s been disappointing because we came here expecting to do much better than we have.”

    GB finished level with Finland and Trinidad & Tobago,  20th in the medal table in Barcelona.

    This was Bill Furniss a month ago

    And here is Chris Spice