So I went to visit the Yuan Shen Natatorium this morning, which is closer to our hotel than the Oriental Sports Center world championships venue, and therefore a time saver for when Pál needs to train. It was only a 10 minute taxi ride even with what seemed like a traffic jam to me, costing 14 yuan (approximately 2.1 US dollars).
According to a survey by the National Sporting Goods Association, swimming is the 3rd most popular sport based on participation in the US (not necessarily formal participation on a team). An estimated 51,900,000 people age 7 and up participated in swimming during 2010, an increase of 3.4% since 2008. Via Kast-A-Way Swimwear.
Australias sprint comet James Magnussen has lost no confidence going into this month’s world championships despite battling pneumonia, the national head coach Leigh Nugent said yesterday. Read more here on The Sydney Morning Herald.
Very nice, very nice indeed. A guide was waiting for us at the end of the ramp from the airplane, guiding us via special express-lanes through customs formalities to our luggage, and then straight to the hotel. Here, I was greeted with flowers by the hotel staff, and then met our liaison officer Cora, who had been studying her guests down to the detail where she had drawn the Faroese flag by hand in her notebook, ready to take me to the accreditation office.
The FINIS Aquapulse Heart Rate Monitor is now available, ready to measure your heart rate via your earlobe, and then communicate it to you in real time through bone conduction. Waterproof of course. Only $149.99, but I wish they’d squeezed a MP3-player into it also. See FINIS, via engadget.com.
We’re here, after a tough ordeal of travel and transit from Saturday morning to Sunday. The Chinese have been very welcoming and effective, so that I now have my accreditation and everything, ready for action these coming days. Shanghai is hot and humid, but the hotel is nice and cool, the food good and the people pleasant. And the internet works :-)
Fox 5 Newscaster demonstrating here how not to use the Jetlev r200, if not you’re trying for an all-time low :-)
Me and the president will be leaving Faroe Islands tomorrow, heading for Denmark, Finland and then China. Arriving in Shanghai early on Sunday. I don’t know if I’ll be able to post anything from there, but will do my very best :-)
SwimmingWorld has posted several interesting videos here on tv.swimmingworldmagazine.com, from the 2011 USA World Championships Training Camp in the Gold Coast Aquatic Center in Queensland, Australia. Here below it is Michael Phelps being interviewed on Media Day.
