Swimmer's Daily

  • According to this video, freestyle is “practical and powerful”, backstroke “elegant and graceful”, breaststroke “efficient but dirty sounding” and butterfly “flying but sinking”. Hmm.

  • Based on a true story, The Longest Swim is a drama depicting one man’s struggle to save his best friend from a diabetic seizure and the journey of friendship that led them to this pivotal moment. While vacationing at a Vermont lake house, Matt is awakened by loud piercing screams and groans coming from his best friends Ben’s bedroom, rushes to it and finds him experiencing a very dangerous diabetic seizure. Now it is up to Matt to save his friend’s life – with no phone, no hospital within 30 miles and the closes inhabited house the one directly across the lake, Matt’s only option is to swim.

    Read more about this low budget feature film on Kickstarter, written by Indie writer Nate Ohl will be brought to life by Director Andrew Bernard. Each member of FLEX-o-Lite Productions has been affected in one way or another by diabetes, main goal to show audiences how important friendship is, while also showing how diabetes is a serious disease with serious complications.

  • Fluffy cat Nimbus forced to swim a full length in the Anderson pool. That’s it … I’m calling the police ! :-)

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    Via NewNowNext

  • South Africa’s Ryk Neethling today dismissed claims by his ex-girlfriend, American Amanda Beard, that they abused drugs during the time they were together, a relationship that began in 1999 and lasted until they both won Olympic gold at the Athens 2004 Summer Games. Read The Star

    (more…)

  • Finland’s Hanna-Maria Seppälä happy with her 59.24 women’s 100 meter individual medley win at the Rijeka 2008 European Short Course Championships. It was a new European Championship record, and it was her birthday.

    Seppälä winner of the Rijeka 2008 women's 100 IM

  • The annual Swim Cup Eindhoven will be held in the Pieter van den Hoogenband swim stadium from tomorrow April 12th until Sunday April 15th 2012, featuring world class swimmers from the Netherlands, Sweden, Great Britain, Slovenia and Brazil, the likes of Ranomi Kromowidjojo, Sarah Sjöström, David Carry, Peter Mankoč and Bruno Fratus. See startlist here from the event site and follow their channel on YouTube, I understand that this is quite an important test for the Swedes, via www.simma.nu/se

    Update: Lot’s of videos from the Eindhoven Swim Cup on Zwemsiten!

  • According to SwimNews, French breaststroke Olympic medallist Hugues Duboscq has finaly parted company with mentor and coach of 15 years, Christos Paparradoupolos, after dissapointing results at the French Olympic trials in Dunkirk last month. Duboscq telling L’Equiope:

    “I hardly saw Christos in Dunkirk … after the races, he disappeared. Just like last year in Shanghai, where after the 100 breaststroke, I didn’t hear from him for three days. For years, after each of my performances, I was left to myself. The role of a coach is to be there no matter what. He must be present at the pool and afterwards. The swimmer who fails always turns to self-reflection – but he also needs to talk.”

  • Baby pygmy hippopotomus Monifa takes her first swim, watched by her Taronga Park Zoo Keeper in Sydney, Australia. “She’s really good, she’s an amazing swimmer, we’re very proud”, via neatorama

  • This report released today by the Danish Sports Confederation (DIF) reveals growing membership numbers in Danish football (soccer), swimming and gymnastics, while sports like handball, badminton and tennis see pretty much equivalent declines.

    The 10 biggest sports in Denmark in 2011

    1. Football 356,754 (+13,799)
    2. Golf 157,496 (-588)
    3. Swimming 146,103 (+9,515)
    4. Gymnastics 129,876 (+5,086)
    5. Handball 113,323 (-1,605)
    6. Badminton 90,967 (-3,597)
    7. Workers’ Sport 79,032 (+4,716)
    8. Equestrianism 73,023 (-1,214)
    9. Tennis 60,414 (-2,127)
    10. Sailing 56,624 (-1,663)

    (numbers in parenthesis is change compared to 2010)

    The ambition is to have 100.000 more Danes doing sports by the end of 2013 compared to 2010-numbers, piloted by 20 development projects including new federations and projects focusing on more members in existing federations. Football (soccer) has seen the biggest growth in sheer numbers, while swimming has the fastest growth rate among the biggest sports.

    The results from the annual membership registration show that DIF’s 61 federations now have 1,734,094 members in total, which is 13,494 members more than the year before. This is a small number compared to the 13,799 in football alone, and 28,400 in football, swimming and gymnastics combined, so there seems to be more a shift towards these sports from other sports, rather than recruitment of new members of sport in general.

    See DIF Statistics for more details.