Swimmer's Daily

  • He he, an environmental group has filmed remarkable footage of a whale shark sucking fish from a hole in a fishing net. Read 9News

  • A really nice article here on the The New York Times, via SCAQ Blog:

    Rome Neal walked up to the microphone last week at the Paris Blues in Harlem and was just about to sing “I Worry About You” when he decided to share some great news with his audience. In his 12 years of performing a one-man show about Thelonious Monk, Neal had come to appreciate the importance of exquisite timing.

    “My daughter’s name is Lia Neal and she just made it to become an Olympic swimmer, and she’ll be swimming in the Olympics in 2012 in London, England, the 4×100 relay,” Neal said.

    The audience applauded and cheered enthusiastically. “Lia is 17 years old,” he said, “the second African-American female swimmer to make it to the Olympics.”

  • The Royal Navy’s largest warship, the carrier and assault ship HMS Ocean, has returned to London to provide helicopter support and sniper teams for the duration of the Olympics. RAF Typhoon fast jets and RAF Puma helicopters with snipers armed with hi-tech rifles will be among the military aircraft patrolling the restricted zone, air security pain including:

    • RAF Typhoon fast jets based at Northolt
    • RAF Puma helicopters with sniper teams, based at Ilford in east London
    • Army Rapier and Starstreak ground-based air defence systems at six London sites
    • Royal Navy Sea King helicopters based at Northolt
    • Helicopter carrier HMS Ocean on the River Thames, base for helicopter operations and personnel accommodation

    (more…)

  • Swimming, can turn from a safe activity to a life threatening situation in a matter of seconds. Often it’s because of something we are doing wrong in the water. 13 On Your Side took a look at the top mistakes swimmers make and how to avoid them. Read wzzm13.com.

  • 46-year-old Irish endurance swimmer Steve Redmond has become the first person ever to complete the Ocean 7 Challenge, when he late yesterday evening crossed the Tsugaru Strait in Japan in 14 hours and 24 minutes. Read for instance Irish Times and West Cork Times.

  • The Aviationist reports that as of this weekend, the usual civilian control of London’s skies is (temporarily) over, and the Royal Air Force is in charge. A new task force called “Atlas Control” will monitor London’s airspace in the weeks leading up to and during the Olympics, with most traffic over the city banned or tightly regulated. “Not since the Second World War have our skies been so closely guarded.” Wow, read Gizmodo.

    The Aviationist says flying near London should be pretty tense:

    All pilots have to be in constant communication with “Atlas Control”. Even those that are within 10 nautical miles of the outer boundary are expected to keep an ear on the Atlas frequency at all times.

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  • The mother of an Australian Olympian is being threatened with legal action by Swimming Australia after lobbying too hard for swimmers with disabilities. Also, Melanie Schlanger’s parents are angered that they are not sure whether they will get to see their daughter swim in the finals, having applied for ticket in the public ballot but missing out.

  • Jon Hestoy, president of the Faroese Swimming Association, congratulating young Magnus Jákupsson (1994) at the 2012 Faroese (Short Course) Swimming Championships. The occasion that Magnus had won our highest-ranked ‘starred golden pin’ for his Faroese record of 55.94 in the 100 IM.

    Our president greeting Magnus at FM 2012

    Magnus has been a busy man these past 12 days, setting 7 Faroese records and 7 junior records the five days at the European Junior Championship, and then again 6 Faroese records and 7 junior records the six days at the Danish Championships (with one travel day in between).

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  • Danish national team director Lars Sørensen announced early 2011 that he would stop after the London 2012 Olympics, and now it has been announced that he will start as club director of Hovedstadens Svømmeklub (the Capitol’s Swim Club), a merger of GI40Hermes and Svømmeklubben København into Denmark’s biggest sports club.

    In other Danish swimming news, local bloggers are enraged by their Olympic team appearing half-hearted at the Danish Nationals this past week, getting special treatment like being allowed to swim ‘out of competition’ in the outer lanes of finals despite of not having swum prelims, culminating with one swimmer switching from back to breaststroke in the 200 backstroke final (after having qualified for it in the prelims), apparently as planned with the team chiefs.

    Their complaint has already hit major Danish news channels like DR Sporten and (tabloid) Ekstra Bladet, Sørensen offering this explanation (in my bad translation):

    ‘It is of course against the rules, but I would like to nuance this a bit. Because of Olympic preparations, Rikke only had two days at the Danish Championships, these two days not including the 200 breaststroke that she would like to swim. So it was an attempt to optimize a few days at the Danish Champs seen in respect to her primary event not being there.’