Swimmer's Daily

  • He coached Laure Manaudou, y’know, via Amaury Leveaux Official.

  • Gary Hall Senior shares a Race Club secret with us, to use the Rangs Jr by Finis as upper arm flotation devices supporting high elbow position, instead of the original purpose.

  • Six Japanese men swam 150 kilometers (95 miles) through heavy winds and rough seas to reach the Taiwanese coast Monday in a show of gratitude to Taiwan for its US$260 million aid after the March earthquake and tsunami. Taiwan’s foreign minister Timothy Yang said at a cocktail party to welcome the swimmers, that he was most impressed with the Japanese people’s calm attitude and persistent determination to help each other after the disaster, and that he expects Japan to regain its prosperity soon. Read The Associated Press and Focus Taiwan

  • The ferry “Salam Express” sank in December 1991 while it was on its way home to Egypt from Saudi Arabia. On board there were officially 690 passengers, some estimate 1600, whereof only 200 survived.

    Diving on The Salam Express Red Sea 2011 from Karim Hamza on Vimeo.

  • Water droplet photography meets a Photron high speed camera for some serious ‘water in motion’ poetry.

    They also filmed shallow water Guiness Record holder Darren Taylor a.k.a. “Professor Splash” doing a high dive into a kiddie pool

    So let’s watch that shallow water world record

  • Six Japanese swimmers are at the moment navigating 150 kilometers to Taiwan to show gratitude for the US$260.5 million aid the country provided following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disasters. Team leader Kazuya Suzuki said prior to the swimmers’ departure that their main fear is “not the current or typhoons, but the fragility of people’s hearts. We will overcome the fragility and swim toward Taiwan with the gratitude of the Japanese people.” Read Focus Taiwan.

  • Exciting news, according to the Guardian, 41-year-old Mark Foster doesn’t rule out a seventh Games appearance, which will make him the oldest Olympic swimmer in history. In fact, it sounds like he doesn’t see himself as retired yet.

    “A tiny part of me never wanted to say that it was over. I was always leaving the door open. I have always loved the challenge of swimming. It would be a fabulous story. But I’m the one who has got to do it. At the moment the water is a relaxing place, rather than a ‘hurt yourself’ place.

    “I’m 41. I’ve got to leave it alone at some point, but I haven’t officially said I’m going to retire. It keeps people guessing, doesn’t it? If a sponsor came along and gave me a million pounds to get in the pool, I would be in tomorrow. I will decide for definite for Christmas.”

    DSC00264

    (Yup, we met him in Budapest last year, Pál to the left, Mark to the right. Nice bloke!)

  • Britta SteffenAfter having won the 50 and 100 meter freestyle crowns at both the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the Rome 2009 World Championships, Britta Steffen flopped at the Shanghai 2011 World Championships, ending up as #16 in the 100 freestyle and a no-show in the 50. In her opinion because the (supersuit era?) weight-training had hurt her stamina, wherefore she now abandons the weights:

    The 27-year-old Berliner flopped at the World Swimming Championships in Shanghai, China, in July when she failed to defend either the 50m or 100m world titles she won in Rome two years ago. The German then fled Shanghai after her embarrassing performance, which she blames on a weight-training programme that she says turned her into “a little body-builder.”

    “I was so muscular that after 50 metres, I didn’t have any strength left,” Steffen said having won two golds at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.

    “That is when stamina comes into play and I should have done a lot more training in that area.”

    Read TheNational.

  • Suraj Mall, eight, was unconscious in the deep end, but the guard and another young swimmer thought he was “pretending to be dead” before the alarm was raised. After being pulled out, he was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. Read the Mirror.