Swimmer's Daily

  • Nada Arkaji is set to be the first female swimmer to represent her country Qatar at the Olympic Games in London. She will join other female hopefuls wanting to represent Qatar at the games this summer. “I am so proud that I am the only swimmer to represent my country and I hope I will achieve good results. I do encourage girls to carry on with any sports activity, especially swimming.” Read more here on Al Arabiya

  • Scary article here on BeyondChron, adapted from the ebook “PENN STATE IN THE POOL: The Cover-Up of the USA Swimming Youth Coach Sex Abuse Scandal,” which will be published shortly, see also concussioninc.net

    “The highly publicized recent cases at Penn State and Syracuse involved a comparative handful of victims of a single coach. USA Swimming has an estimated hundreds of victims of dozens of coaches. Other than the Catholic Church, no other known organization harbored more pedophiles than USA Swimming. And no other organization, on a pro rata basis, comes close in terms of the number of reported sexual molesters.”

  • According to the Guardian, Venezuela’s entire aquatics team face a ban after the nation’s water polo side threw an Olympic qualification event into disarray, by failing to turn up. The Venezuelans had been due to take part in the 12-team tournament in Edmonton, Canada, which guarantees four teams a ticket to London. But the team failed to leave home, which led to the world governing body FINA angrily warning Venezuelan swimmers and divers that they may also be subject to any ban which is imposed.

  • Video analysis teams from Germany, France and Canada crammed together despite of quite generous room for us at the Shanghai 2011 World Aquatics Championships.

    Video Analysis teams at Shanghai 2011

  • According to reachforthewall.com, 2009 All-Met swimmer Amanda Kendall has been dismissed from the Louisiana State swim team for violating team rules, specific reasons unknown, and Kendall declining to comment on the rules violation. She has withdrawn from classes at LSUA and returned to her former club coach Peter Ward at George Mason University. LSU’s compliance department has applied for an Olympic-year waiver for Kendall that would allow her to retain her final year of eligibility without establishing a year of residency first.

  • Studio Roosegaarde has created this line of high-tech clothing know as “Intimacy 2.0”, that turn more and more transparent, the faster you heart beats. Myes, maybe the other way around in swimming, for training purposes … ‘anything under 130 bpm and your butt will show!’ Via Buzzfeed

  • At the Japan Swim today, Kosuke Kitajima clocked 2:08.00 in the men’s 200 meter breaststroke, surpassing Naoya Tomita’s textile best of 2:08.25 set in Hamamatsu, Japan last year, and easy qualifying within the Japan cut of 2:10.27. And, Ryo Tateishi was right behind him in 2:08.17, closing in on Kitajima at the end. Haruka Ueda qualifyed with a Japanese record of 54.00 in the women’s 100 freestyle, old record being 54.33 set by Misaki Yamaguchi in 2009, and Takeshi Matsuda with a 1:54.01 in the men’s 200 butterfly. Read much more here on SwimmingWorld Magazine.

    Men’s 200 breaststroke

    Men’s 200 butterfly

  • The 2014 Winter Swimming World Championships will be in the Lapland city of Rovaniemi, close to the Arctic circle, official hometown of Santa Claus 20-23 March 2014. Notice that in their preliminary program, the first day is reserved to Accreditation and … Acclimatization, I fear that that’s about where the warmness stops ;-)

    Also please notice, the Finnish Santa might not be the warm and cuddly kind that you expect, as demonstrated in the brilliant Finnish movie Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

  • At the Japan Swim yesterday, Natsumi Hoshi crushed the Japanese record in the women’s 200 butterfly with a scorching time of 2:04.69, her old record a 2:05.91 from the Shanghai 2011 World Championships, closing in fast on China’s Liu Zige’s World textile best of 2:04.40. Aya Terakawa clipped her national record in the women’s 100 backstroke with a world best time this year of 59.10, old record a 59.13 from the Japanese Sports Festival in 2010. Both naturally qualifying for the Olympics. In the women’s 200 IM, Izumi Kato made the Olympic squad with a 2:11.79, other swimmers going under the FINA A standard in this event and the others but not the Japanese Olympic cut, read more here on SwimmingWorld Magazine.

    Women’s 200 butterfly

    Women’s 100 backstroke