Longhorn Aquatics was hosting its New Year’s Classic, and Lance Armstrong decided to drop by. The seven-time Tour de France champ finished 7th in his heat and 21st overall, clocking a time of 5:08.11, in what he on Twitter said was his first race in 25 years. Read and watch YNN.
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/lancearmstrong/status/160842882511667200″]
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/lancearmstrong/status/161110102735196161″]
Bartal has run my OQT spreadsheet through Google Fusion, resulting in this world map listing all swimmers from each country that have reached the Olympic Qualification Times (in individual events) as of January 17th, 2012, and only the two fastest in those cases where a country has more than two reaching the OQT in an event. A sort of ‘virtual national teams’ listing, provided that the countries would indeed choose these swimmers, based on results only until now, and that no-one had to sit over due to injury or doping sentence or whatever. And totally ignoring the possibility of additional swimmers invited by FINA after reaching the lesser OST-standard.
Pál Joensen being tested at the Kalev Spa in Tallinn, Estonia, by Rein Haljand, Ph.D, Professor of Kinesiology at the Tallinn University. I highly recommend the service of Mr. Haljand, used by LEN for competition analyses since ‘forever’, and by a multitude of national teams for technique analyses. I also recommend the Kalev Spa facility, as a nice 50 meter pool connected to a hotel that for instance focuses on being asthma- and allergy-friendly, in a cosy city based around the medieval-looking old town, listed on UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites list.
The ‘runner’ is Haljand’s son and technique analysis assistant, Holger.
In this otherwise a bit silly (and sad) story about how a dolphin in captivity at the Nanjing Andover Underwater World in China swallowed a ball while performing, resulting in a 3-hour-long operation involving rope and hook and burning of the ball, a basketball player with extra long and steel wire … we get this very intriguing information:
As human beings, we breathe involuntarily and if we choose not to breathe, the body will take in air automatically. Whales and dolphins however, are conscious breathers and must decide when to breathe. This means they have to be conscious. Such was the case with Jiang Bo, who was sedated but awake, during the multiple attempts to remove the ball from his stomach.
Read more here on Digital Journal
Because she pees in it, that’s why. See g4tv.com
This video was played on a big screen during the Szczecin 2011 European Short Course Championships, with a dancer performing live underneath. Ended with a swimmer diving into the pool, swimming 2,5 laps before lifting himself up on the lane rope, asking for the big applause that he got :-)
Interesting post here on Sweat Science, on how researchers at University of Alabama put 16 NCAA swimmers through three 50-yards sprints on separate days, so that each tried one without any warm-up at all, one with a short, standardized 2×50 yard warm-up, and one with the swimmers’ usual individual warm-ups, averaging about 1300 meters. The result was that most benefited from their usual warm-up, but as it is also pointed out, that 19% actually had their best time after the short warm-up, and 37% after no warm-up at all. Leaving only 44% or less than half benefiting from their usual warm-up.
Pál Joensen and Eyðbjørn Joensen ready for the Jóansøku 2010 open water swim in Vági, Suðuroy, Faroe Islands. Eyðbjørn with the thumbs up has opted for the insulated solution, while Pál opted for the really fast (and cold) Jaked ‘supersuit’ solution.
FINA has since before the Shanghai 2011 World Championships provided us with an interesting tool, demanding all World and Olympic qualification times to be submitted to their Swimming World Rankings. The London 2012 data set is of course not complete yet, with the qualification period spanning from March 1st 2011 to June 18th 2012 – but we still get an exciting overview over what is to come, when we put these data through pivot tables etc.
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