A 40-foot humpback whale that had become trapped on a sandbar in the Wadden Sea has died after a series of rescue attempts that were initiated after the mammal was discovered by a kite surfer. In fact, the kite surfer, who was videotaping his ride, jumped over the whale in what looks like a surprise encounter. He returned briefly to investigate before sailing ashore to alert authorities. See GrindTV
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British Swimming statement – UK Sport Funding
“British Swimming is committed to implementing a streamlined Swimming World Class Programme with minimal impact on the Rio 2016 Olympic cycle following today’s UK Sport funding announcement.
The sport of swimming has seen a reduction of around 15% from the £25m it received in the London 2012 Olympiad to a figure of £21.3m for the Rio 2016 cycle.
David Sparkes, British Swimming CEO said: “Overall we are satisfied with the outcome. While disappointed with the award for swimming, we recognise we need to rebuild confidence that we can deliver medals at Olympic level consistently before we can demand more investment.”
Read more here on swimming.org
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Sunrise : Aussies proud of London effort
A now old video but still really nice – The Prime Minister officially welcomes the Australian Olympic team back to Australia and Sunrise chats with some of our biggest stars including James Magnussen.
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Missy Franklin and the Dolphins – Touch the Wall Film Trailer
A new trailer for the upcoming feature documentary TOUCH THE WALL featuring Missy Franklin and Kara Lynn Joyce. TOUCH THE WALL documents the rise of teenager Missy Franklin and 3-time Olympian Kara Lynn Joyce as they work toward’s swimming’s biggest stage – the London Olympics. A film by Grant Barbeito and Christo Brock. More at www.touchthewall.com
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2012 FINA/Arena Swimming World Cup season summary
The best moments of the 2012 FINA/Arena Swimming World Cup
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Professional Swimmer – Ready Room to Pool with Speedo
Find out what the athletes see behind the scenes from the ready room to the pool at the 2012 Istanbul Short Course World Championships with Speedo. Interesting swim when ‘Ryan’ gets into pool, is that 2 butterfly strokes and then a bit of underwater doggy-paddle before finishing at 25 meters ? :-P
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CC photo #353: Aleksander Hetland after winning the Istanbul 2012 men’s 50 breaststroke
Norway’s Aleksander Hetland ecstatic after winning the men’s 50 meter breaststroke at the FINA 2012 World Swimming Championships (25) in Istanbul, Turkey. According to him the very last swim of his career, “As I took that last stroke I was actually thinking – this is your last stroke, make it count”. Read Speed Endurance and see the result list here
(Sorry about the low picture quality here, WordPress is messing with me … the quality is much better on Flickr)
Here is a video of the swim
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An open letter to Eurosport
As our coach put it, when we were not watching the women’s 100 meter breaststroke final on TV at the team hotel: ‘I hope these are the snooker Olympics, since they are showing them non-live, rather than the swimming World Champs live’ :-/
Dear Eurosport,
I hope you’re well. There’s been a world swimming championships going on these past few days. I say that in case you’ve not noticed; a glance at your schedules this weekend would suggest you forgot all about it. After all, while the swimmers were racing in Istanbul, we were treated to replays and delayed coverage of cross-country skiing, luge and ski jumping.
Read more here on Pullbuoy
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Pál Joensen and the Istanbul 2012 theme song
The day before his 1500 bronze medal. We are proud of you, Pal :-)