After producing legendary 1500 freestyle swimmers, Kieren Perkins and Grant Hackett, Swimming Australia is now lacking a 1500 freestyle swimmer in their squad to compete at the 2011 World Championships in Shanghai. Robert Hurley, who succeeded for the selection standard of 1500 freestyle in 15:08.00 minutes last year, has abandoned the event this year, considering 200 and 400 freestyle to be more suitable for him. And so does Ryan Napoleon, another favourable candidate for the 1500 freestyle in the Australian team. *I* think that they fear the reaper, aka Sun Yang. Via blogs.bettor.com.
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No more world records for a decade, says Cavic
Čavić and Rosolino are being a bit pessimistic, me thinks:
“I think the whole swimming world has to get ready not to see another world record in the men’s sprints for a long time,” said Serbian butterfly specialist Milorad Cavic, the closest challenger to Michael Phelps’ record eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
How long? According to Cavic and others, a decade.
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Monaco royal wedding guest list revealed
hello!magazine.com reveals that other than the usual suspects like princes and princesses and Roger Moore and Mel Gibson, at least three swimmers get to attend the royal wedding of Charlene Wittstock and Prince Albert II of Monaco: Fellow South African Sarah Poewe, Australian swimmer Sophie Edington and ‘glamorous German swimming champ’ Franziska van Almsick, all three friends of the bride. No news on Ian Thorpe though, maybe someone feels threatened? :-)
(I’ll be following this wedding like crazy, of course)
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Subirats suspended for 1 year after administrative anti-doping error
Ouch, Venezuelan Albert Subirats, who won gold in the 50 fly and silver in 100 fly at last year’s World Championships in Dubai, has been suspended by FINA for 1 year, after three “filing violations” within an 18-month period. Meaning that he failed to properly notify FINA of his time and place for drug-testing availability.
And get this, Subirats contended that he has sent all of his proper whereabouts to the Venezuelan Swimming Federation in a timely manner, verified by him with email documentation, but that the VSF had failed to properly file that information with FINA. He even showed that he had expressed concern about the federation sending the information to FINA on time.
Read more here on theswimmerscircle.com.
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FINA/Arena Swimming World Cup 2011 schedule confirmed
FINA today confirmed its 2011 World Cup Calendar, with Dubai (UAE) added as the first stage of the series on October 7-8, and Tokyo bringing the circuit to a close on November 12-13. Via SwimNews.com.
The 2011 schedule:
- Fri 7 -Sat 8 October Dubai (UAE)
- Sat 15 – Sun 16 October Stockholm (SWE)
- Tue 18 – Wed 19 October Moscow (RUS)
- Sat 22 – Sun 23 October Berlin (GER)
- Fri 4 – Sat 5 November Singapore (SIN)
- Tue 8 – Wed 9 November Beijing (CHN)
- Sat 12 – Sun 13 November Tokyo (JPN)
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Photos lost 4 years in the ocean reunited with owner after 1 day
Yesterday, PetaPixel had this amazing story about photos recovered from a camera after spending 4 years in the ocean. The finder Peter Govaars posted the photos here on Flickr, and behold, after one single day the owner of the camera has been found. I don’t know what is more magical, the memory cards that can survive even being boiled and having nails driven through them, or the Internet.
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Water polo player Stanton felled by that dreaded Clenbuterol
James Stanton, Australia’s goalkeeper at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, tested positive for Clenbuterol during an out of competition test on September 15 last year, and has therefore been banned for 2 years, including the London 2012 Olympics. The 27-year old strenuously denies knowingly taking the substance, saying it “goes against everything I believe in”, but accepts that it somehow entered his system. This comes at the same time that the World Anti-Doping Agency is considering changing its rules regarding Clenbuterol, allowing a minimum level instead of none at all because of all the contaminated food out there. Read The Sydney Morning Herald and Swimming World Magazine.
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Molina tests positive for stimulant, out of World Championships
Brazilian swimming legend Fabiola Molina has tested positive for Methylhexaneamine, a stimulant used heavily as a dietary supplement and a nasal decongestant, as well as in the street-drug known as “party pills”. The CBDA anti-doping commission determined that Molina’s use was not intentional or meant to gain any competitive advantage, so they gave her a lenient two-month suspension from her last competition, which was the Maria Lenk Trophy in early May. She will therefore shortly be eligible for competition again, but has had her results since the meet erased, including her qualifying standards for the Shanghai World Championships. Read more here on theswimmerscircle.com and SwimNews.com.
In a statement to Brazilian media, Molina said: “I would like to point out, firstly, that the presence of a substance prohibited in the body of an athlete may not be a sign of doping. As strange as that may sound, my case came about because of my carelessness that showed in a random test and not in competition [the argument being that a stimulant would only be of benefit in such circumstances]. In my case, given that there was no intention to improve my performance, I was punished for two months, where I could have received a penalty of between a month and two years.”
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40 percent of children who drown do so in “kiddie pools”
Scary stuff, researchers for the online journal Pediatrics report nearly 40 percent of the 209 children who drowned from 2001 to 2009 in the USA did so in small, inflatable “kiddie pools”. The majority (94%) involved children younger than 5 years, 73% occurred in the child’s own yard and 81% occurred during the summer months.
“Because portable pools are generally small, inexpensive and easy to use, parents often do not think about the potential dangers these pools present,” said Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, senior author of the study
Drowning study prompts urgency for swim lessons: MyFoxTAMPABAY.com
Via myfoxtampabay.com, ABC News (with another video), NY Daily News (with another video), CNN (with another video)


