Yet again Pál and Jón amaze me. You cannot begin to understand how amateurish the rest of us are, down to the point where we had to have our T-shirts printed here in Shanghai, because nobody had time before we left. Pure guts and brains.
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A world champ took this picture
Alexander Dale Oen himself asked if I had been working out, with those legs. I told him no, I have been eating :-D
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This girl has stretched
Amazing performance at the FINA Gala Dinner.
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Second impression, the Chinese are really nice
I haven’t met an unpleasant person in Shanghai, period. I’ve had teenage classmates robbed in broad daylight outside Macy’s on Broadway, a friend attacked for just walking home from a party in Copenhagen, and experienced the French in general in Paris. Shanghai Pudong district is nothing like that.
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Alexander Dale Oen mourns victims of anti-Islam attacker
Norwegian swimmer, Alexander Dale Oen, mourned the victims of the recent tragedy in Oslo and Utøya in Norway. He set the fastest time (59.37) in the 100 breaststroke semi-finals at the XIV FINA World Championships in Shanghai today.
[Music: “Death of Aase” by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg]
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International swimming is a whole lot of hotel
Participation at World Championships sounds very exotic, but is in fact quite tedious at times. The swimmer’s need to rest between 1 or 2 swim sessions a day, which means that you spend most of your time either at the hotel, the pool, or travelling between those two places. With little time for touristing the place, it are the small things that keep our spirits high.
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My deepest condolences to our Norwegian friends
Words cannot describe, retweet from Alexander Dale Oen’s twitter account, ‘We are so few in this country, each fallen is a brother or friend.’
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The Shanghai 2011 start lists are now ready
FINA has released the revised psych sheets for the World Championships, to be seen for instance here on Omegatiming.com. My personal focus is of course on the 800 and 1500 freestyle for men, where our guy Pál Joensen from the Faroe Islands is ranked No. 9 in the 800 and No. 6 in the 1500.
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This pool is reserved for Pál Joensen
Dumb luck or respect, Pál Joensen got to swim totally alone at the Yuan Shen Natatorium in Shanghai yesterday at noon. Afternoon training was packed though, with all the big countries in the pool, and the deck crowded with camera crews filming Tae-hwan Park, USA et al.