Swimmer's Daily

  • ye-shiwenRead The Independent

    Last summer, on the opening day of London’s Games, Ye produced a landmark swim, obliterating a four-year-old world record with a performance that defied belief. There were plenty who did not believe her achievement and innuendo was already her companion as she stepped onto the podium to collect gold for the 400m individual medley. […]

    Last month she won three titles at her national championships, a first step towards her aim of repeating her London double – she also won her signature event, the 200m individual medley. At August’s World Championships in Barcelona, she will step warily into the global spotlight again because London bruised her.

    “I was very depressed and angry after London,” says Ye, “but everything is fine now.” […]

    (more…)

  • See news.com.au

    The wife of former Swimming Australia president Barclay Nettlefold has defended her husband, saying he has no history of making lewd comments.

    Nettlefold resigned on Sunday after admitting making inappropriate comments “in jest”.

    He was alleged to have called himself a “donkey” in reference to physical endowment.

    But his wife Tina Nettlefold said such “schoolyard comments”, including reference to a woman’s breasts, were not in Nettlefold’s character and were part of a personal grudge against him.

    (more…)

  • nevada-fallSee CNN

    Park rangers will resume their search Monday for a teenage swimmer who was swept over a nearly 600-foot waterfall in California’s Yosemite National Park over the weekend.

    Aleh Kalman had been swimming about 150 feet from the edge of the Nevada Fall on Saturday afternoon when he was caught up in the swift current of the Merced River, the National Park Service reported. The 19-year-old Sacramento resident had gone to the park with a church group, the park service said.

    Image courtesy of Urban / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

  • Read ABC Grandstand Sport

    Australian Olympic swimmers have expressed hopes that the sport’s latest controversy will not affect sponsors or preparations for next month’s World Championships. [… ]

    Olympic silver medallist Brenton Rickard said on Monday that the Australian squad needed to remain focussed on the championships, which will be held in Barcelona.

    “Obviously it could pose a distraction but we are deep in training,” he said.

    “We are just worrying about ourselves now in terms of what we’re doing on a day to basis.

    “Hopefully the team can just continue doing that and swimming well.

  • Danish swimming prodigy Mie Ø. Nielsen tonight announced on Facebook that she has decided to withdraw from the Danish 2013 Barcelona squad, as her knee hasn’t healed sufficiently after operations done in August 2012 and May 2013. There were speculations in Danish media that it would come to this when she couldn’t join the now ongoing Danish altitude camp in Sierra Nevada after her second operation, and of course this means that the Danish relay teams will be weakened, come Barcelona 2013. The Danish 2013 Barcelona squad now consists of Jeanette Ottesen Gray, Lotte Friis, Rikke Møller Pedersen and Pernille Blume.

    Happy Danes on the Istanbul 2012 podium

    (Danish 4×100 Medley World Champions at Istanbul 2012, Mie to the far right)

  • Finland’s Hanna-Maria Seppälä at the LEN 2008 European Short Course Championships in Rijeka, Croatia. The event must have been either the women’s 100 freestyle final or the 100 IM semifinal. She set a new championships record of 59.62 in the 100 IM, and then again with a winning time of 59.24 the day after (which happened to be her birthday).

    Hanna-Maria Seppälä at Rijeka 2008

  • See West Seattle Blog

    You’ve seen the work of West Seattle’s award-winning “Diver Laura” James – a filmmaker, photographer, writer, environmental activist – here and elsewhere over the past few years. Now, we get a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to get those views; much more complicated than simply jumping into the water with a camera. The video above tells that story as part of a profile of Laura’s work, made for the Puget Sound Starts Here campaign by another local filmmaker, Matthew J. Clark.

    See also diverlaura.com

  • Former six times world champion swimmer Mark Foster has told Daybreak he learnt to swim because his father was “petrified of water”.

  • “In our exclusive new series ‘Medal Memories’ we explore some of the Commonwealth Games greatest moments, hearing from the Athletes themselves and their personal stories behind the the iconic moments.

    In our first film ex-swimmer David Carry looks back at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games where he picked up and amazing double-gold, helping Scotland to their greatest ever Commonwealth Games.”

    In related news, ForArgyll recognizes Carry’s partly Faroese roots. Yay!

    “David, who is part Scot, part Faroese, has recently been added to Scottish Swimming’s Board of Directors.”