Swimmer's Daily

  • Confession, I used to be a cycling afficionado following the classics and the tours religiously up until the mess with first Festina and then Bjarne Riis obviously doped before confessing, me turning to Marco Pantani because he looked too tiny to be doped, just to have my newfound hero first caught doping and then dying from a bleeding cocaine overdose. My heart for cycling in shatters, watching Le Tour by habit only to realize that so many of those guys just won’t quit theirs.

    Well, now the story goes that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has struck a deal with still active riders George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, David Zabriskie, Christian Vande Velde and team director Jonathan Vaughters, to start a 6-months doping ban after their participation in the Tour De France and Vuelta a Espana, in return for turning on their former teammate and 7-team Tour de France champion, Lance Armstrong. Read for instance road.cc and NBC Sports

    Vaughters makes his and his team’s official statement in the video above.

    I guess we’ll know in September.

  • After two days of racing at the Antwerp 2012 European Junior Championships, Russia’s youngsters are dominating the event with 7 gold medals and 1 silver (out of 14 gold possible till now), ahead of Italy’s 3 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze, and Germany’s 1 gold, 4 silver and 2 bronze. Most winning swimmers are Russia’s Iuliia Larina and Italy’s Gabriele Detti, having won 2 gold medals each. And Italy’s Diletta Carli took down East Germany’s Heidi Grein’s 400 freestyle European Junior Championships record from 1986.

    Boys 100 backstroke

    Russia’s Andrei Shabashov took the gold in 55.24 and 831 FINA points ahead of Italy’s favorites Fabio Laugeni in 55.31 (827 FINA points) and Niccolo’ Bonacchi in 55.63 (813 FINA points), Shabashov ranked third with a time of 56.08 on the entry list before clocking 56.72 and 6th in the prelims and then 56.15 and 3rd in the semifinal.

    Detti winner of the 400 free, yesterday. Photo courtesy of Jákup Jacobsen

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  • Winner of the prestigious 2012 ‘reddot’ design award. Sweet.

  • That is just so sweet / awesome / why-don’t-i-swim-faster. And don’t worry, it is okay! Better quality picture here on Zimbio

  • Oh my, now Olympic champion shooter Russel Marks criticizes Australia’s decision to ban sleeping pills and says it will cost the country medals at the London Olympic Games. Given the long distance Australian athletes have to travel to London and the jet-lag that will go with it, Mark says it will be unfair for Olympic team members like him to suffer for Hackett’s dependency problem.

    “This will affect the amount of medals the team wins,” Mark told media outlets on Wednesday.
    “If John Coates tells me I can only use sleeping pills for three nights in London, it will have an effect on my performance.
    “If I don’t get a good night’s sleep it’s not worth me going, I need something to get me eight hours sleep.”

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  • After this first day of the Antwerp 2012 European Junior Championships, Russia leads the medal table with 2 gold medals ahead of Germany’s 1 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze, and Spain’s 1 gold and 1 silver. Italy’s Gabriele Detti won the boys’ 400 freestyle in 3:49.27, arguably the best performance of the day, while Spain’s Maria Vilas Vidal hauled most medals by securing both medals that her country won.

    Leifi og PH í Antwerpen

    Girls 50 breaststroke

    Young Margarethe Hummel (GER, born 1997 against girls born 1996) was favorite with an entry time of 31.91 ahead of Anna Stankovics (HUN) in 32.02 and Julia Willers (GER) in 32.28. Sophie Tyler (GBR) clocked the best time in the prelims (32.07) and semifinal (31.71) before Hummel hit hard in the final with a time of 31.55 and 842 FINA points ahead of Taylor in 31.76 and Sztankovics in 31.98.

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  • Magnus Jákupsson and Eyðbjørn Joensen during warmup at the 2012 Faroese National (Short Course) Championships. Magnus (in the TYR cap) was only 2 hundredths of a second from qualifying for the 50 butterfly final in the Antwerp 2012 European Junior Championships semi-final this afternoon. Eyðbjørn is Pál’s kid brother, competing at the Nordic Youth Championships this weekend.

    Magnus and Eyðbjørn at the Faroese Champs 2012

  • Danish swim chief Lars Sørensen interviewing Tunesia’s Olympic 1500 meter champion Oussama Mellouli by the pool in Rijeka, Croatia. Watch more videos here on svoem.dk

  • The BBC has produced this animated title sequence for their London Olympic Games coverage. Via Neatorama