Read The Sydney Morning Herald
A freak training injury involving a truck tyre has left Australia’s leading women’s freestyle swimmer Mel Schlanger off her usual pace at the national titles in Adelaide.
After finishing fourth in the 100m women’s final at last year’s London Olympics after having led the 4x100m relay team to a gold medal, Schlanger could only manage sixth fastest in this morning’s heats. […]
Barry Kime knew he had something special when Chelsea Gubecka joined his Sunshine Coast swim squad just after her eighth birthday.
Gubecka, who is now 14, is set to become the youngest member of the Australian swim team at this year’s world championships after, in her first senior national titles, she won the 1500 metres freestyle final on Sunday night by almost 30 seconds.
Kime said it had been easy to spot the potential of Gubecka, who had started learn-to-swim classes at five months old.
“I got her in and said ‘wow look at this kid, what a rocket’ and within 12 months [she] was on the Queensland swim team for schools,” Kime said.
“Right from day one, her ability to listen and to adapt [had been strong] and she’s always willing to try her best all the time. Some kids at a young age can’t concentrate for more than five seconds but she’s one of those kids where every word you said she’d just lock onto it and adapt to whatever changes you want to make.”
Brian and Nick discover their outer beauty
Too much talk, we wanna see Te Haumi dance! :-)
Read Herald Sun
Qualifying for an Australian swim team at 18 is the dream that Alexander Graham is contemplating turning down.
The talented Melbourne teenager celebrated his 18th birthday on Sunday night with a fifth place finish in the 200m freestyle final in 1:47.23, fast enough to secure a position on his first senior national team.
But Graham may yet do the unthinkable and reject the trip to Barcelona. Graham is still eligible for age group racing and with his coach Gene Jackson they are contemplating skipping the July world titles to instead compete at the junior world championships in August.
See also The Sydney Morning Herald
The team selection criteria does not allow a swimmer to compete in both, so while Graham’s instinct is to compete in Barcelona, he would be willing to sacrifice the experience for the juniors, where he would have a much larger program, if that was the best course for his development.
“We’re weighing it up because [we’re] seeing what will be better for my development, going to juniors or going to seniors and getting the experience,” Graham said.
“… I’m kind of leaning towards going to Barcelona, just because I think it will be good to get the experience in the senior team and racing those open guys.”
Me and Alexander Dale Oen at the LEN 2010 European Swimming Championships in Budapest, Hungary, the day after he had won the men’s 100 breaststroke in a new championship record of 59.20. Today is one year since his passing.
Instabeat‘s funding campaign on Indiegogo is going so well that inventor Hind Hobeika and her team are starting to think that they should have had a higher goal. As of this moment $21,321 of 35,000 goal with 49 days to go. See also this feature on Gizmag yesterday and this one on Ãœbergizmo.
On April 25, Craig Lord and team officially moved on to SwimVortex.com, in their own words because of the estate after SwimNews founder Nick Thierry being unsettled:
At the time Nick passed away in October last year after suffering a stroke, he had been looking forward to seeing the latest plans for a new look SwimNews on a modern platform. Sadly, Nick did not see our plans come to fruition. Though Nick left his swimming assets to the team closest to him at SwimNews, his estate is yet to be settled, such is the process of probate. We can wait no longer to forge ahead with the new world we are creating.
The new site focuses on pretty much the same things, news and world rankings:
Our new platform is the sequel for our coverage at SwimNews based on the plans Craigh Lord, Editor of SwimVortex, had been working on with SwimNews founder and proprietor Nick Thierry and our technical team at the time of his passing in Autumn 2012.
