Swimmer's Daily

  • Norway’s Aleksander Hetland just after his Istanbul 2009 LEN European Short Course Championships win in the men’s 50 meter breaststroke. Hetland’s time was 26.19, ahead of Italy’s Alessandro Terrin in 26.24 and Serbia’s Caba Siladji in 26.31. Tongue-in-cheek guy is Slovenia’s Matjaz Markic, defending champion from Rijeka 2008, here 5th in 26.42.

    Aleksander Hetland celebrates his Istanbul 2009 win

    Hetland by the way wrote a nice piece on here on his website earlier this week, on “Swimming Success and the 20-mile March’, about how even sprinters like him have to put in a consistent effort.

    Everybody can train well or even world class when they’re at their best, but what makes some swimmers world class is that they almost always train at a world class level and they do this over a sufficient amount of time until they actually become world class! I believe that it is the bottom end of the spectrum where the greatest improvement potential lies for 99% of swimmers. Never missing practice (two alarms etc), never being sick (nutrition, recovery, sleep etc) never losing focus in a workout is what’s really going to make you a great swimmer, not doing some extra 50’ies from the blocks when you occasionally feel great in practice.

  • Kayaking about 1.5 miles off the coast of Maui, these people saw and heard many whales, before a large male humpback whale popped up for a breath about 30 feet away and swam a circle around them. Camerawork is a bit dodgy, as the camera man decided to take in the moment, rather than think about the video. That’s OK ! :-)

    Humpback Encounter from Ohana Films on Vimeo.

  • This is a short behind the scenes clip of a shoot done by Pete Webb mid January with Ollie Armfiled and his sea swimming club. Beautiful.

    4º Sea Swimmers from Pete Webb on Vimeo.

  • Yesterday, Great Britain’s swimming legend Duncan Goodhew visited a school in Longton, England, showing the children there his gold and bronze medals from the 1980 Olympic Games, and sharing his success story to encourage them to keep active. “I have always believed in the value of sport. I was born dyslexic and really struggled in life, but sport changed that.” Read article here on This is Staffordshire

    Duncan Goodhew on the Olympic Values

  • No spoilers here, you have to watch the video (or look it up)

    First Lady Michelle Obama does press ups on Ellen DeGeneres Show

  • As a major global partner of the 2012 London Olympics, Procter & Gamble is sponsoring not only the entire Australian team, but also Eamon Sullivan, Emily Seebohm and Sophie Edington as ambassadors for Gillette, Pantene and Oral-B respectively.

    [blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/Eamon_Sullivan/status/164544711040839680″]
     
    Explaining its involvement with the Olympics, Maile Carnegie, Managing Director of P&G Australia and New Zealand says: “While we are not in the business of sports, P&G is in the business of helping mums . . . Every Olympic athlete has a mum and mums are with their children every step of the way, nurturing and encouraging them.”

    P&G even went so far as to survey the athletes about mum’s support, finding that, between them, the mums have had over 5,000 early morning starts, travelled 6.5 times around the world and done 11,000 extra loads of washing to support their children’s Olympic dreams. Via bellasugar

    (Great photo of Aussie ‘mumbassadors’ with kids found here on everygirlsanswer.com)

  • “Svimjihøllin í Gundadali” in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands ready for the inaugural annual dual meet between Faroe Islands and Iceland. Only a 25 meter pool, but nicely color-coordinated with lane ropes in Faroese colors and everything.

    Tórshavn's swimming pool ready for the FAR-ISL 2009 Dual Meet

  • Maria-Teresa Solomons demonstrating the Uddiyana Bandha exercise in the video below, an abdominal tonification and purging exercise used in yoga for hundreds of years, recently adopted by freedivers to improve the elimination of air from the lungs, enabling the ribcage to flex and compress more at extreme pressures at depth. Don’t know if pool swimmers can use it for anything, other than the obvious WTF-effect. Via freedivers.net

  • Belgian long distance swimmer Tom Vangeneugden has decided to stop as a professional swimmer, saying here on his blog that ‘There comes a time when you no longer meet your expectations, the goals become unrealistic.’ He is happy with having completed the goals he set as a young swimmer, to compete in the Olympics and swim under 15 minutes in the 1500 freestyle, but now unfortunately it seems he doesn’t meet his own expectations, pointing to the London 2012 Olympics.

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