Swimmer's Daily

  • Natalie Coughlin has gone through it twice, escaping with eleven medals from two Olympics. So it must be easy for her by now?

    “Trust me, the Olympics are terrifying,” Coughlin said after swimming in the Santa Clara Grand Prix on Sunday. “In a good way, but terrifying. There’s nothing like walking onto the deck at the Olympic finals in front of, well, in Beijing, it was like 18,000 people, then there are millions and millions of people watching at home. So you feel those nerves, but usually you channel them in a good way.”

    Comparing with her “Dancing With The Stars” participation in 2009:

    “People were like, ‘Oh, you must be so nervous,’ and I expected myself to be nervous, then I got out there and I was like, ‘This is nothing. You think this is nerve-racking, you need to go to the Olympic finals, because this is nothing!’ “

    Nice, Read Standard-Examiner

    Here’s 1996 and 2000 Olympic champion Amy van Dyken interviewing Coughlin

  • Little known fact :-)

  • Keri-Anne Payne almost stepped away from swimming after missing out on a medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Games but her mum Pat admits it’s a relief she stuck at it with an Olympic gold on home soil her potential reward. Read The Sport Review

  • Behold Newham, the youngest borough in London, featuring the largest urban shopping centre in Europe, and oh yes, everything Olympic this summer! :-)

  • Olympic swimmer Nick D’Arcy has apologized after posting a photograph of himself and team mate Kenrick Monk posing with guns on Facebook. According to SwimNews, the Australian Olympic Committee will punish them by sending them home as soon as the swimming program ends mid-way through the Games, and they will be banned from using social media. Australian Swimming Association’s boss Daniel Kowalski has decried the overreaction, saying there should be issued nothing sterner than words of warning. And he is right.

    “They were in the US, they were at a shooting range relaxing and unwinding after a hard week’s training. It was a legal practice. The only thing they’ve done wrong was sharing it with the world. I’m a little bit shocked by the overreaction to it”

  • The traditional way, but gee, many safety issues here, me thinks.

  • This Wednesday June 6, Natalia Molchanova and her son, Alexey Molchanov, both completed successful world record dives, Natalia to 127 meters for the women’s ‘variable weight’ record in a time of 3:38 while Alexey secured the men’s ‘constant weight’ record at 125 meters, in 3:52. These records will be official once the doping test results have been verified. See AIDA International

  • New Zealand’s William Trubridge Wednesday managed a 125 meter (410 feet) ‘constant weight’ freedive, but then failed the official surface protocol that state that within 15 seconds the freediver must give an “OK” hand sign, a verbal “I am OK” and remove their goggles and nose clip within 15 seconds. Meaning it won’t count as a world record, even if it is the deepest ever.

    “I made it to 125m and back to the surface, but my oxygen was just too low and I had a samba [a loss of muscular control caused by oxygen deprivation] and failed the surface protocol. I forgot to remove my goggles. There were groans and laughs, but on the whole I’m not too gutted”

    Here’s Trubridge managing a 120 meter dive three dives before, with nice explanations on how a dive like this is performed.

    Read Xtremesports4u

  • Sorry for not posting anything yesterday, was out on a boat trip before trying to juggle a company dinner with our swimming federation congress and my younger daughter performing music. Weather was nice, which is when these islands beat everything :-)

    Heygadrangur