Reuters has had an interesting talk with Denis Cotterell, coach of 1500 favorite Sun Yang:
“There’s a lot of Hackett in Sun,” a tired Cotterell told Reuters in a phone call from his flat in the Athletes’ Village.
“He has a lot of passion for the sport and a passion for speed.
“We’ll see whether he can be tough as Grant. He’s superior technically but toughness is a rarer quality.
Never mind ‘statistical anomalies‘ and what have you; there were many ties at the Debrecen 2012 European Swimming Championships, but according to Omega only because they are not allowed to time the athletes to the 1/10,100th of a second. Read Reuters:
“We had in the European championships a lot of discussions about the ties,” he explained poolside on Wednesday as Olympic hopefuls went through their training routines in the lanes behind him.
Huerzeler said Omega had done more detailed analysis of those ties with their data and discovered that, timed to 1/1,000th of a second, only one remained. At 1/10,000th there were none.
And no, it wouldn’t be a good idea to go below the hundredth of a second:
“They are talking about measuring the thousandths again but that is not correct,” said Huerzeler. “One thousandth of a second is 1.7 millimetres.
“And who gives me the guarantee that each lane in the construction of a pool is precise to the millimetre? The tolerances in the pool are in centimetres…the thousandth is only feasible if everybody is swimming in the same line.”
As an engineer, I’m with the Omega man on this one. Also because he has an awesome name :-P
(Pretty sure the Moon landings were a statistical anomaly too)
This video is from a near death incident as SeaWorld San Diego back in 2006, when the killer whale Kasatka attacked her trainer Ken Peters presumably because she heard a distress call from her calf in a backstage pool. Peters suffers a broken foot but remains eerily calm, finally managing to free himself, only to have Kasatka charge him over the barrier net. The video has no sound, btw. Read for instance Mail Online, CBS News and 9News
England-based graffiti artist (and political activist) Banksy‘s view on I guess the Starstreak missile system protection of Olympic athletes. There is an even harsher one here on his site, I guess on third-world outsourcing and stuff.
Via Neatorama
Or Foley artist as some call them … even looks like one ! :-P
Via Mashable
A look at James Magnussen’s freestyle stroke, via the17thman
Watch the miraculous journey of infant sea turtles as these tiny animals run the gauntlet of predators and harsh conditions, courtesy of TED-Ed
Stephanie Rice’s famously troublesome shoulder has flared up after full-intensity speedwork in London to emphasise the stark reality that she will need to swim through pain from the start of her Olympic program on Saturday. Read the Herald Sun.
(Video featuring Rice, D’Arcy and Magnussen, among others)
Czech Republic’s Petra Chocova on top of the Debrecen 2012 medal podium as European Champion in the women’s 50 meter breaststroke. Her winning time 31.25, see result list here.
