Swimmer's Daily

  • Enjoy the celebration of thousand of swimmers as they welcomed 2012 with the annual Coney Island Polar Bear Club New Year’s Day Swim. Beware, there is a quite NSFW lady taking the plunge in just ‘tassels and a thong’, having promised to do so if she raised $5000 dollars for a young boy with a rare brain disease. And if you peek (as I know some people other than me who did), dig that man in the yellow cap doing the same, while his son covers his eyes :-)

    The Coldest Thing on Coney Island from Hi – Tide Films Inc on Vimeo.

  • Via the17thman

  • Fantastic :-)

    Ellery Swimming II from rob b on Vimeo.

  • Team GB’s first black female swimmer Achieng Ajulu-Bushell has taken a swipe at the sport’s national governing body for failing to support her while at a plateau in her progress. Widely regarded as one of Britain’s brighest talents, she recently dropped out of British Swimming’s World Class Performance program, and will now turn her attentions on achieving the grades needed to land a place at Oxford University in September. Saying that she would “rather have a first-class degree than an Olympic medal”, and following it up with this scathing remark:

    “It is my easiest way of justifying it (not competing at the Games). I haven’t been overly motivated for a year and didn’t get better for two. It is a brutal sport and horrible to go through the plateau when things aren’t going right. There was a huge lack of support for athletes not doing well.

    “So many needed attention that it just went against British Swimming’s ethos of this being a long-term sport. But I’m not bitter. I just got to the stage where I got fed up. My stroke was changed and I simply lost rhythm and strength in my legs.”

    (And video from when Ajulu-Bushell was 15, she’s now 17)

    Via ESPN, see also SwimmingWorld Magazine and The Telegraph

  • Orcas have until now been prevented from moving into the Arctic regions because of their large dorsal fins impeding passage in and around sea ice. But with the ice melting, they range also northward, decimating populations of marine mammals and threatening the Inuit’s food supply. In the most gory way, killing for sport on occasion and wasting food. Still think they are the most beautiful thing out there, but don’t doubt their “killer” nickname

    The bowhead doesn’t stand a chance. His killers have surrounded him, holding him underwater and covering his blowhole so he can’t breathe. They immobilize his flippers and tail while ramming the beast to break ribs and damage internal organs as they tear chunks of flesh from the living animal.

    Killer Whales, Galápagos Islands

    Read more here on Indian Country

    Photo courtesy of Dave Govoni, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

  • According to Dr. Win Wenger, author of 48 books including How To Increase Your Intelligence and The Einstein Factor, we can all gain 10 or more IQ points if we accumulate 20 hours of held-breath underwater swimming in doses of 20-180 seconds at a time over a 3 week period. Including better span of attention, better span of awareness, better awareness of the interrelatedness of things and of ideas and/or perceptions, and better ability to win arguments and disputes. How can we not love this theory, especially when he stresses that this has to be truly underwater – not just holding your breath or dipping your face in water – since the brain-circulation enhancement apparently is induced by the marine diving response. Via this article on Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, also mentioning six other ways of improving your intelligence.

    Freediving Competition: William Trubridge Underwater Glide

    Photo courtesy of jayhem, CC BY 2.0

  • I’m not totally sure where this is, but the video description says FEB Hrádek, and other videos by MrSmahy mention www.feb.cz, which is the East Bohemia Freediver club in the Czech Republic. Hrádek means ‘small fort’ in Czech, there is a map here on their site mentioning Hradec close to the center of the map. I love how they park their slippers on the ice :-)

  • Norway’s Aleksander Hetland just after his Istanbul 2009 LEN European Short Course Championships win in the men’s 50 meter breaststroke. Hetland’s time was 26.19, ahead of Italy’s Alessandro Terrin in 26.24 and Serbia’s Caba Siladji in 26.31. Tongue-in-cheek guy is Slovenia’s Matjaz Markic, defending champion from Rijeka 2008, here 5th in 26.42.

    Aleksander Hetland celebrates his Istanbul 2009 win

    Hetland by the way wrote a nice piece on here on his website earlier this week, on “Swimming Success and the 20-mile March’, about how even sprinters like him have to put in a consistent effort.

    Everybody can train well or even world class when they’re at their best, but what makes some swimmers world class is that they almost always train at a world class level and they do this over a sufficient amount of time until they actually become world class! I believe that it is the bottom end of the spectrum where the greatest improvement potential lies for 99% of swimmers. Never missing practice (two alarms etc), never being sick (nutrition, recovery, sleep etc) never losing focus in a workout is what’s really going to make you a great swimmer, not doing some extra 50’ies from the blocks when you occasionally feel great in practice.

  • Kayaking about 1.5 miles off the coast of Maui, these people saw and heard many whales, before a large male humpback whale popped up for a breath about 30 feet away and swam a circle around them. Camerawork is a bit dodgy, as the camera man decided to take in the moment, rather than think about the video. That’s OK ! :-)

    Humpback Encounter from Ohana Films on Vimeo.