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:
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.
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.
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.”
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)
How can this not be swimming relevant? Go straight to photojojo.com and see the 15 tips: Shoot in safe waters, have enough light, stay at the surface, get close, get acrobatic, make bubbles, bring in props, practice your shot before you take it, wear light clothing, shoot up or across, and 5 more.
(A relevant and quite brilliant photo, me thinks, courtesy of Mick Gleissner)
Children drownings nearly doubled in Canada last year, according to figures released by the Lifesaving Society. Most concerning was the spike in drownings of children under five, says spokeswoman Barbara Byers, stressing that people aren’t getting the message about water safety.
“People just don’t realize the risk or the power of the water,” said Byers. “Some people don’t realize they need swimming survival skills.”
In Ontario, most toddler drownings were in backyard pools, Byers said, adding toddlers have an almost “magnetic attraction” to the water.
“They’re not fearful of the water, and if there’s a chance to get there, and especially if a young toddler is looking out a window and seeing a glistening pool or a lake, they’re going to want to get there.”
So the society has produced a video, demonstrating the 3 simple “Swim to Survive” skills – roll into deep water, tread water for one minute and then swim 50 metres. Canadians need those skills to survive a fall into deep water, the society says, which I guess we can freely copy around the world.
Via ctv.ca
Even though Song Hong-seon, researcher at the Korea Institute of Sport Science according to dongA says that “in the men’s 400-meter freestyle, the winner will be determined by a competition of strategies”, it sounds to me like both Park Tae-hwan and Sun Yang are preparing an all-out sprint from the get-go.
Analysts say that having judged he failed to properly cope with Park’s early spurt, Sun will have undergone ample training stressing aggressiveness and cut his 50-meter lap time from the very beginning. As a result, he has seen his times rapidly improve in recent months thanks to these training sessions.
In other Korean news, Park’s manager says that he is adding the 100 freestyle to his usual repertoire of the 200 and 400 freestyle, at the Shanghai World Championships. This is buoyed by his recent run in the 100, where he at Santa Clara International 2011 edged Michael Phelps himself to take the 100 meter crown at 48.92 seconds.
