Titmus’s time of 3 minutes 56.4 seconds broke the previous record set by American rival Katie Ledecky at the 2016 Olympics
Ariarne Titmus has broken the women’s 400 metres freestyle world record at the Australian championships.
Titmus clocked three minutes 3 minutes 56.40 seconds in Sunday night’s final in Adelaide.
Continue reading...Ariarne Titmus is happy at swimming fast again but annoyed she cannot yet break the longest-standing women’s world record. Titmus won the 200 metres freestyle at the Australian championships on Friday night, swimming faster than when she won Olympic gold in the event last year.
Titmus clocked one minute 53.31 seconds in Adelaide, some 0.19 seconds quicker than when she won the event at the Tokyo Games. The dual Olympic champion was eyeing the world record of 1:52.98 set by Italy’s Federica Pellegrini in 2009 during the super-suit era, the longest-standing benchmark in women’s swimming.
Continue reading...Singer-turned-swimmer Cody Simpson qualified for this year’s Commonwealth Games after finishing third in the 100 metres butterfly final at the national championships in Adelaide, while Shayna Jack secured selection on her comeback from a doping ban.
Simpson, 25, turned heads earlier on Wednesday when he upstaged Olympic freestyle gold medallist Kyle Chalmers and won his heat in a personal best time of 51.79 seconds behind defending champion Matt Temple (51.64).
Continue reading...Olympic swimmer says election message promoted by rightwing lobby group Advance ‘is just awful to me’
The Olympic gold medallist Emily Seebohm has slammed rightwing lobby group Advance for using her image without permission on a transphobic billboard.
The billboards display the words “women’s sport is not for men” alongside images of swimmers Dawn Fraser, Emma McKeon and Seebohm and were launched as part of an attack on the Warringah MP, Zali Steggall, who has been vocal in her support for trans women to compete in female sports.
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Continue reading...Conservative lobby group uses images of elite swimmers in ads targeting ‘woke politicians’ but Emily Seebohm says Advance acted ‘without my consent’
The Australian Olympic Committee and Swimming Australia are threatening a conservative lobby group with legal action for featuring images of elite female swimmers on billboards it is using to campaign against trans women’s participation in sport.
The AOC will send a legal letter to the conservative group Advance on Tuesday alleging the billboards are using its intellectual property without permission, a spokesperson said on Monday night.
Continue reading...They were invented so surfers and swimmers could get undressed without flashing. So why are Dryrobes – half-towel, half-jacket – taking over our high streets?
During the spring lockdown in 2020, Christopher Sloman was walking down a street in Hove when he saw what looked like a green dinosaur looming towards him. The 48-year-old charity shop worker was baffled by the figure in the distance – until he realised it was a woman whose coat was so oversized that her hands (one carrying a phone, the other a coffee) “looked really small,” Sloman says. “I thought: My God, what on earth is that?”
“That” turned out to be a Dryrobe – the £160 ankle-length, waterproof robe designed as an outdoor changing robe for surfers in 2010 which has become the go-to piece of kit for any half-serious outdoor swimmer.
Continue reading...From jellyfish in the Caribbean to hypothermia in the English Channel, swimming hasn’t been easy for Chloë McCardel – but can feel ‘so wild and free’
We’re not off to a good start. I’m fumbling with my cap, the rubber clinging to my head lopsidedly, my hair straggling out. I take it off to start again and the woman who has swum the fickle English Channel more times than any other human, the “Queen of the Channel”, instructs me in how to correctly apply a swimming cap.
Chloë McCardel and I are going for an ocean swim at Bondi. She dives into the foamy sea ahead of me – more slender mermaid than broad-shouldered Amazonian. Knee deep, I feel the current suck at my flesh. It’s not one of Bondi’s better days. Chest deep, I realise I’m being dragged out and my very amateur ocean-swimming abilities are no match for this surf. Panic rises. McCardel is an impatient white-cap in the distance. What was I thinking, suggesting a swim with superwoman?
Continue reading...Being a beautiful watery creature is a challenge if you have no technique or breath control – and can’t hear a word beneath your floral swimming cap
I am too old for Disney’s Little Mermaid. My sister was the right age, but our right-on 80s household was a princess-free zone (though The Little Mermaid is arguably one of the more subversive films in the canon, with its exploration of identity and conformity and nods to drag culture). I have, however, gleaned that the transformation from mermaid to human is a risky business; I believe a crab says so.
But what about the reverse? Because today, I, a human, am becoming a mermaid, thanks to Donna Rumney of Mermaids at Jesmond Pool, in Newcastle upon Tyne. Donna is booked out with children’s mermaid parties but adult sessions are popular, too: everyone wants to be a mermaid now. There are mermaid pageants and conventions; people pay thousands of pounds for custom-made silicone tails. Something about that in-between state, the grace and fluidity, appeals when life on land feels so hidebound and joyless. I love the idea of achieving a state of otherworldly aquatic grace; what could possibly go wrong?
Continue reading...Rich started working out, Mags started running and Shashi started walking three times a day. It is possible to reach new goals as you get older and it is not only your physical health that benefits
‘I do sometimes feel like a cliche,” says Rich Jones. We’re in the cafe at his gym and he is in workout gear. It’s true, something about the language and the before and after pictures from his physical transformation – severely overweight to lean and chiselled – would appear familiar from thousands of adverts and magazine spreads, if it wasn’t for one thing; Jones got into the best shape of his adult life after he passed 50. “On 9 August 2019, I walked in here. I was 54 and 127kg [20st].”
He worked out at least six days a week, for 90 minutes or more at a time. “I immersed myself in everything, I did gym, I did classes, Pilates, I even did barre,” he says. Within eight or 10 weeks, he was able to stop taking painkillers for a shoulder injury. He now cycles and runs on top of his gym sessions. “It’s just a habit – I brush my teeth every day, I go for a run every day.”
Continue reading...Chloë McCardel finally achieved her dream of crossing the English Channel more times than anyone else. The 36-year-old Australian completed her 44th crossing a little after 2pm BST, eclipsing the previous record held by British swimmer Alison Streeter. ‘I’m buzzing right now, I feel like I could go again and swim the channel again tomorrow, although that's not a very good idea’, she said. After starting in the dead of night at Shakespeare Beach at Dover, she touched land at Wissant Beach on the French side, before returning to her support boat to celebrate
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The six-time gold medallist is campaigning for WeThe15 – a global human rights movement that will feature at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics
Ellie Cole is a bonafide Australian sporting champion. Yet as other women athletes, or sportspeople of colour, or other minorities can attest, success is no shield sometimes.
Related: Tokyo 2020 Paralympics briefing: two more weeks of glory and despair
Continue reading...A storm broke out at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre on Friday morning when Ryan Murphy, the USA’s silver medallist in the 200m backstroke, spoke out against the sport’s doping problem and said he was “swimming in a race that’s probably not clean”. Almost any other time, this would have been an admirably honest thing to do, but the problem was Murphy had only just lost to Evgeny Rylov, representing the Russian Olympic Committee, and the comments came across as an accusation. Rylov, 24, won both the 100m and 200m backstroke this week, the 200m with an Olympic record time of 1min 53.27sec.
“I’ve got about 15 thoughts, and 13 of them would get me into a lot of trouble,” Murphy said after the race. “It is a huge mental drain to go through the year knowing that I’m swimming in a race that’s probably not clean, and that is what it is. The people that know a lot more about the situation made the decision that they did. I don’t have the bandwidth to train for the Olympics at a very high level and try to lobby the people that are making the decisions that they’re making the wrong decisions.”
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Table tennis: The gold medal game in the women’s singles competition is an all-Chinese affair, Chen Meng against Sun Yingsha - the first and second seed. Sun won the first game though (first to seven), and leads 5-4 (first to 11) in the second. If you’re following the broadcast, the world feed commentator is a gem, bringing 10/10 enthusiasm to his task. Just as it should for a contest like this. “It’s like chess and kung fu combined... with a racket!” Love him.
Marta Martyanova, Larisa Korobeynikova, Adelina Zagidullina and Inna Deriglazova are Olympic champions, the latter holding her nerve after a late rally from the French quartet to triumph 45-34.
Continue reading...After 40 UK drownings in July, national park says TikTok and Instagram are leading visitors to isolated party spots
Drunk swimming is becoming an “increasing challenge” in the Lake District this summer, a national park spokesman has said, as visitors try to replicate boozy foreign holidays at home.
An estimated 40 people have drowned in the UK since the heatwave began on 14 July, triple the normal rate of water deaths, according to the National Water Safety Forum.
Continue reading...The physiologist and survival expert on the joys and dangers of cold water immersion
Dr Heather Massey is a researcher at the University of Portsmouth’s Extreme Environments research group and a seasoned open water swimmer. Having swum the Channel and competed in the world ice swimming championships, her research into the effects of extreme temperatures on the body is personal.
During lockdown the number of people enjoying wild swimming soared, but so did the number of deaths. Massey’s research examines whether cold water swimming is more likely to kill or cure.
Continue reading...The second-most decorated swimmer in Olympic history became a global symbol of privilege in Rio en route to rock bottom. Now the 36-year-old father of two will try to reach a fifth Games
It’s been a roller-coaster five years for Ryan Lochte, even accounting for the ample fluctuations of a celebrity athlete whose nearly two decades in the public eye have been defined by in-water excellence measured against self-sabotage out of it. The second-most decorated men’s swimmer in Olympic history has married and become a father of two. He’s also been branded as a global symbol of privilege after an eponymous Rio Olympics scandal where he lied about being robbed at gunpoint, served two lengthy suspensions and admitted himself to rehab for alcohol addiction after one TMZ headline too many. Peaks and troughs, as they say.
Yet through all the tumult, Lochte has never meaningfully wavered in his goal of swimming in a fifth Olympics. And when the US swimming trials begin on Friday in Omaha, the 36-year-old will attempt to make it a reality. His best chance is expected to come on Sunday night in the 200m individual medley, the event where he set a world record nearly a decade ago that stands today. Should he earn a spot on the US team for Tokyo, he will become the oldest American male swimmer to ever compete at an Olympics.
Continue reading...Models, influencers and Kardashians are embracing the consciously ill-fitting way to make your swimsuit last longer. Hopefully the look won’t catch on
Name: The upside-down bikini.
Age: About three seasons old, and growing.
Continue reading...Only 2% of regular swimmers in England are black. A new film examines the reasons behind the statistic
Filmmaker Ed Accura was 53 when he learned to swim, and only then through fear that his young daughter might get into trouble and he wouldn’t be able to save her.
“I live near the Thames and I said to myself, if anything happened to her and I couldn’t help, I would never forgive myself.”
Continue reading...From pools and lidos to tennis courts and golf courses, it has been an action-packed day around England as lockdown regulations are relaxed to allow outdoor sporting activity. People will now be able to meet up legally outside in groups of six or two households and organised outdoor sport can resume
Continue reading...Teenybopper poster boy Cody Simpson will be among Australia’s top swimmers at next month’s national championships as he hones his 100m butterfly before June’s Olympic trials.
The junior swimmer turned international singer has taken another key step in his quest to make it in the pool by entering the Australian titles on the Gold Coast, where he will attempt to shave whole seconds from his personal best in his unlikely bid to qualify for the Tokyo Games.
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