Swimmer's Daily

  • South Africa’s world record holder Cameron van der Burgh presents the crap stuff that he keeps in the trunk of his Audi A1, including swim stuff (of course) and golf clubs. Sponsored by Audi, yes, but also truly fond of his car.

    Funny story about Cameron and his car: After competing in the South African Swimming Championships in the spring of 2010, our Pál Joensen and his coach Jón Bjarnason got stuck in Joburg Airport, because of the smoke from Eyjafjallajökull, all the way up here in the North Atlantic.

    After waiting for a day and a night and being told that they might have to wait for 14 more days, Pál gets frustrated and posts “get me out of here” on Facebook. 5 minutes later, the then world champion Cameron calls and says ‘I’ll be there in half an hour’.

    So he picks them up in his Audi (A3 Quattro then, I think), takes them with him to Pretoria, for a little bit of altitude training in his 50 meter pool, some nice home cooking and a sleepover. The day after, he drives them to Johannesburg again, where they somehow get on a plane.

    Now that is a great guy !

  • Paulus Wildeboer, national coach of Denmark, describes here to local folks in high altitude Leadville how his Olympic swimmers train. That the old myth in his view is wrong, that ‘the harder you work, the better you become’. That it instead should be ‘the better you work, the better you become’, which doesn’t necessarily mean hard work every day. He describes how he introduces anaerobic training early, rather than build a pure aerobic base first, which I guess/know is based on the theories of Dr. Jan Olbrecht. At 6 min 50 sec, we even get to see how he gives Lotte Friis direct feedback :-)

  • Gary Hall Sr discusses swimming with world renowned head coach of Mecklenburg Aquatic Club David Marsh. Among other things an interesting theory that backstrokers like Nick Thoman are more prone to hit blue lane lines than red ones.

  • Great explanation and footage, more to be seen on Speedo Pace Club

  • Four hints:

    • It is a swimmer turned singer
    • Her husband is also a famous singer
    • She’s had success in a band and as solo artist
    • She has her very own fashion line

    Go to Aol.Music to get the answer

  • Earlier this month, Rick Coleman and his wife were kayaking off Redondo Beach coast when a nearly 50-foot blue whale began eating lunch at the side of his boat. Coleman had his new waterproof GoPro head-mounted video camera with him, and well, then decided to just jump in to film the whale also underwater.

    Here is a news segment about the encounter, where they show the GoPro camera and interview Coleman.

    Source ThePostGame

  • Joey is a young river otter at the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale who won’t jump into the water, probably because he was separated from his mother before he learned to swim. He is making progress though, so go Joey. Read and see videos for instance on ABC 7 and RightThisMinute

  • For American swimmer Marcus Titus, being deaf is more advantage than disability, at least when it’s time to get in the water. “It helps me stay in my own world, helps me focus on what I need to do,” the 25-year-old said at the Pan American Games after winning a bronze medal in his first ever major competition not restricted to people with disabilities, with a 1:01.12 in the 100 breaststroke behind Brazil’s Felipe França da Silva and Felipe Lima in 1:00.34 and 1:00.99 respectively. Now he aims for a spot at the 2012 Olympic Team, read AP

  • We had a TV crew from the Danish national broadcasting channel DR following us to the Faroe Islands today, who are doing a segment for next Saturday evening. Already this evening, they had a short TV segment ready about Pál’s win in Stockholm, where he says he’s happy about winning a gold in Stockholm for the first time, but not so happy about the time.

    They are GoPro users by the way, cannot wait to see the underwater footage next weekend :-)

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