Swimmer's Daily

  • In Manhattan Dance School by Alex Shchukin. Darn, why couldn’t we get some move with both feet on the ground!? :-)

  • The young man is making a name for himself on team with a large group of girls. Go Wyatt, you are braver that most boys!

  • “Four Birds A Boating crew member Sarah Weldon competes in her first ever open water swim.” Really nicely made video!

  • Promotion spot featuring Pieter van den Hoogenband and Alain Bernard. Excited yet?

    EUROSPORT : Promotion Spot SWIMMING BARCELONA from EUROSPORT – STARTEAM on Vimeo.

  • Read Shanghaiist

    Three men have been arrested after a company executive drowned in Guangzhou during an exercise in which he was repeatedly held underwater to help ‘overcome his fear’.

    The man, surnamed Huang, had paid 30,000 yuan for the training course. The three organisers have been held by police for accidentally causing the death of the man. The men avoided being charged for murder because they were apparently too stupid to realise that holding someone underwater repeatedly could kill them.

    3000 Chinese Yuan is about 4900 US Dollars, see Google

    See also Shanghai Daily

    Huang, the boss of a local company, participated in one section of the class designed to “overcome his fear.”

    In this section, two tutors held Huang underwater in a swimming pool, only allowing him to take air every 30 seconds.

  • Just a photo from the FINA 2012 World Swimming Championships (25m) in Istanbul, Turkey. From left to right Mie Østergaard Nielsen (DEN, silver), Olivia Smoliga (USA, gold) and Simona Baumrtova (CZE, bronze), see the result list here. Fun trying to ‘catch a flash’ :-)

    DSC07127

  • Photo of Ian Thorpe swimming in the ‘cool waters of the Bosphorus’, when backing the 2013 Bosphorus Cross-Continental open water swim in Istanbul and the Istanbul 2020 Olympic bid.

    Hürriyet Daily News writes that even if he just swam a short ‘show swim’, he said it was really hard to swim against the current and in the sea that was so cold, the 10-time Olympic medalist shivering after 15 minutes.

    National Olympic Committee has some interesting but for us non-Turkish speaking cryptic details (in Turkish) here about him not participating because of a shoulder injury?

    Google translation:

    ‘A very difficult race. This is a unique organization, I am very happy to be. Reveals the importance of the Bosphorus in Istanbul Racing. Shoulder my injury, but I would love to compete there. Hopefully I’ll find the opportunity to contest the Bosphorus in the coming years’

  • Read The Daily Progress

    Virginia graduate (2011) and swimming legend Matt McLean has conquered that interior battle like few others. In a specialty, distance freestyle, which demands mental discipline, he has ascended to the top of the national and world rankings thanks to a gargantuan 6-foot-6, 220-pound frame and a cerebral, measured mental approach. After second- and third-place finishes in the 400- and 200-meter freestyle races at the National Championships two weekends ago, he will compete at the FINA World Championships in Barcelona later this month.

    “This is a man that’s got all the tools,” said Jon Urbanchek, a former coach of McLean’s.

    (Virginia Swimming video featuring Matt McLean, not directly related to this story)

    But he, like the supporters and coaches who watch him race, is merely a spectator in the controversy which has engulfed 31-time ACC Coach of the Year Mark Bernardino’s sudden retirement. Supporters of Virginia athletics have witnessed the outcome — Bernardino’s abrupt departure and the wave of skepticism from swimming alumni which followed it — but seemingly no one save the Virginia athletics department or Bernardino himself knows what transpired beneath the surface. And as McLean balances his frustration with Bernardino’s retirement with his anticipation for the pinnacle of his swimming career, he bears examination as the quintessential Bernardino swimmer.

    “I think that Mark has done more for the Virginia program than possibly any coach has done for any other program in the country,” McLean said. “He gave 35 years of his life completely to the program, and he held certain values so close that he wouldn’t sacrifice them for anything. Honor, Integrity, Loyalty.”