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.
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.’
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.
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.
Keri-Anne Payne retained the world 10K crown at the Shanghai 2011 world championships today, becoming the first British athlete to qualify for the Olympic Games in London 2012. She led from the start until the third of four 2.5 km circuits, before being overtaken for a while by Australia’s Melissa Gorman, and then deciding it with at strong kick at the end. Via SwimNews.com, see also www.keriannepayne.co.uk.
So I went out to search for that mall again, that I couldn’t find yesterday, and didn’t find today either. Found other things though, like (incidentally) the Yang Shen Natatorium, before returning two hours later with fingers so swollen, that there was squeaking resistance when I clenched my fists.
Australians and Americans write about the difficulties we’re having with keeping up with our social statuses, while inside the Great Firewall of China. Some have found solutions by creating their own virtual private network (VPN) to a server outside of China, while others might have found a loophole using some maybe less restricted internet at the venue. Some join Chinese alternative Weibo, to get some kind of social networking fix.
A huge swath of algae is drifting toward the Chinese city of Qingdao, expecting to blanket its beaches in two days’ time. It is not toxic, but still ravages the ecosystem by suffocating other marine life. This is the third time in five years this has happened, decimating local aquaculture and costing millions of yuan in damages. But some people still swim in it. Via Amusing Planet.
