Beautiful words by South Africa’s world record holder Cameron van der Burgh, in honor of his late rival and friend Alexander Dale Oen. A small excerpt here, read the rest here on Cameron’s blog.
Thank you for inviting me into your home and sharing your life with me.
Fortunately I have only good memories about you and these will fill the gap that is left behind.
The late nights.
The meaningful conversations.
The uncontrollable laughs.
The whale that nearly ate us.
The races we had.
On April 21, 2012, 31-year-old Joe Salter from Pensacola, Florida completed a sprint triathlon consisting of 1/4 mile of swimming, 16.2 miles of bicycling and 4 miles of running in less than two hours while juggling, plasing 147th of 246 participants. Yes, juggling even when open water swimming, serious skills there.
Japan’s Olympic swimmers will prepare for this year’s London Games by undergoing altitude training as planned, despite the death of Alexander Dale Oen. Read Reuters.
“We feel great sorrow at what happened (to Dale Oen),” JSF executive director Masafumi Izumi said. “But the autopsy results did not immediately link his sudden death to the altitude.
“After holding an executive meeting we decided to take all necessary precautions and prepare the athletes in the safest way possible,” he added.
“We will send doctors to monitor the swimmers and before going we will conduct electrocardiogram and heart echo tests under low-oxygen conditions.”
At the German Championships today, world 200m freestyle record-holder Paul Biedermann secured his spot on the German Olympic squad with a time of 1:46.07 in the 200 freestyle, ahead of also qualifying Clemens Rapp in 1:47.57. Marco Koch and Christian von Lehm qualified in the men’s 200 breaststroke with 2:09.48 and 2:10.07 respectively, while Silke Lippok just missed the German cut though making FINA A standard with a time of 1:57.93 in the women’s 200 freestyle. The Germans will have a second chance of making and rearranging the squad at the Debrecen 2012 Europeans, it seems. Read more here on SwimmingWorld Magazine.
Arab-Israeli swimmer Jowan Qupty will represent Israel in the European Swimming Championship. Qupty, 22, was originally denied a spot on the national team. He won a Swimmer’s Association appeal over the decision on Thursday. Read ynetnews.com.
On Missy Franklin’s 17th birthday Friday, and two days before Mother’s Day, the teen has released a video dedicated to her mother, D.A. Franklin, and her mother’s own dedication to the teen’s success. As she almost certainly wouldn’t be a world class swimmer if it wasn’t for her mother, and her mother’s own struggles with the water. Read Yahoo! Sports.
“My mom actually started me swimming when I was very, very young because she’s afraid of the water,” Franklin said. “She wanted me to be comfortable in the water, wanted me to enjoy being in it, and ever since I was a baby, being in the water has been like my second home.”
Don’t think I’ve ever been as torn as today, emotionally, as today following the funeral of Alexander Dale Oen while watching the Faroese Short Course Championships’ prelims / junior championships. Beautiful service, thanks for streaming it online.
Alexander Dale Oen’s funeral ceremony will begin at 12 noon Norwegian time today, with church service at BlomvÃ¥g Kirke in Øygarden. That is in about 35 minutes from now, NRK and TV2.no are already streaming live, the latter not restricted to Norway.
The 300 church seats are reserved for family, friends, neighbors, sport colleagues and representatives from official Norway, with 1500-2000 other people following it on TV in a nearby hall. Representative are for instance from the Norwegian Swimming Federation, Olympiatoppen, his clubs in Oslo, Bergen and Øygarden, LEN with president Nory Kruchten, the entire Norwegian Flagstaff squad, elite athletes from other sports and international swimming friends.
