These past few weeks have been quite humbling for us in Faroese swimming, with people acknowledging the little or lot we have managed to do with miniscule resources. Pál was invited to join the Europe team in the “Duel in the Pool” against USA in December, we had 4 young swimmers (and a coach) doing well at a LEN open water training camp in Spain, and I got to be in the “World/Regional Swimmers of the Year” panel of SwimmingWorld Magazine. Sweet.
Someone has peed too much in that pool
Face Your Fears – Water from Changing Faces on Vimeo.
Exciting stuff, our guy Pál Joensen will be competing against Paul Biedermann in the 400 free, and is the favorite in the 1500. Other interesting names are for instance Geoff Huegill and Eamon Sullivan from Australia, Therese Alshammar and Stefan Nystrand from Sweden, Ingvild Snildal and Alexander Dale Oen from Norway, David Verraszto and Zjuzsanna Jakabos from Hungary, Chad Le Clos from South Africa, Pawel Korzeniowski from Poland, Velimir Stjepanovic from Serbia, Naoya Tomita from Japan, Tyler McGill from USA and Sun Ye and Lu Ying from China. See the startlist here on simforbundet.se.
I’ll be attending myself with Pál, Jón and 4 of our younger talents, so expect to see more material here then. The World Cup leg in Stockholm is in my view a fantastic event, not only because of good competition facilities, but also because we all live tight and cozy in the nearby hotel. A huge inspiration for our upcoming swimmers, to be having breakfast with the likes of Alexander Dale Oen and Jeanette Ottesen.
Wow, swimming commentator and retired Australian Olympic swimmer Nicole Livingstone blames the “dictatorial” nature of our sport for the elaborate lie that Kenrick Monk came up with on Wednesday, saying he was a victim of a hit-an-run accident when all that happened was that he broke his arm from falling of a skateboard.
“Having been a swimmer and knowing what a controlled environment swimming is – when it comes to the coach-swimmer relationship and the coach-administration relationship – it is very dictatorial.
“I can see why he has done it. It’s wrong, but I can see the panic he would have felt”
Read The Herald Sun
For the third time in less than two years, Danish national coach Paulus Wildeboer has brought his team of European swimmers back to the high elevation water of the Lake County Aquatics Center in Leadville, Colorado. “The are only pools in the world at this elevation. It’s very rare to find something like that,” Wildeboer said, referring to the 10,400 feet elevation of Leadville.
“We are now sleeping a week before we get here in hyperbaric tents, and we build the altitude up progressively to help them adapt faster here then when we come up here. After altitude training, they keep sleeping in the tents so they train at sea level and sleep at altitude until close to the competition. Then 10 days before the competition, we take them out of the tents,” Wildeboer said.
It’s a program that seems to be working with his swimmers making waves, Danish Olympic bronze medalist Lotte Friis just won gold at the World Championships, crushing the competition in the 1500 freestyle, and enjoys the Colorado camp also because of other things, such as getting to try their shooting range: “In Denmark you are not allowed to have guns, so I think that was a great experience for all of us.”
Read more here on 9news.com.
British resident Michael Cohen was attacked within seconds of plunging into the water at Fish Hoek near Cape Town last Thursday, by a great white that ripped a good part of his right leg off and badly mauled this left foot. Two quick-thinking pensioners saved him by tying a makeshift tourniquet made of the leg of a wetsuit and two belts around his severed leg and dragging him ashore, while horrified witnesses saw the nine-foot great white only 10 yards from them, poised to strike again. But then suddenly a seal appeared and started circling around the three men, as if prepared to act as a diversion if the shark attacked, enabling them to get to the beach. On a more somber note, Cohen had a history of acting irresponsibly, repeatedly being warned by the shark-spotters who guard the bay, but always saying “If a shark takes me then blame me, not the shark.” So that we’ll do.
Read for instance The Mirror, 9News, The London Evening Standard, Channel 4 and Sky News HD (last link has a video with photos from the rescue and some interview)
They should bring some of these back !
Australian swimming star Kenrick Monk has wasted police time by lying about the incident that caused his broken elbow, the Queensland Police Union says. Union presiden Ian Leavers goes as far as saying that Monk’s lies has caused immense damage to himself, his family, friends and the sport of swimming.
“The public rightly expect that no one should deliberately waste the time of police, whether they be wannabe B-grade celebrity athletes like this modern day ‘boy who cried wolf’, Kenrick Monk, or just regular people”
Sorry for those of you that don’t understand Danish, but this is hilarious. Anders Breinholt host of the comedy show ‘Natholdet‘ watches a news segment about ‘dry swimming’ together with Danish prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, where the reporter cracks up when realizing what he is reading from the teleprompter (that some Danish schools are resorting to ‘dry swimming’, because 20% of Danish municipalities have downsized the obligatory swimming education to not include water). They then call up the reporter, giving him another chance to read the text without laughing, with the promise that he can win a ‘Natholdet’ mug if he makes it. Hilarious in a very sad way.
