2011 14th Fina World Swimming Championships
Shanghai, China
Sat July 24 - Sun Aug 1st
Schedule
Results
Pretraining
there's Six pretraining venues has already prepared for the teams and athletics who arrive in shanghai ahead of the scheduled time. & the cheapest they charge the athletes to train is $20 per hour per swimmer.
Really? That's pretty harsh. Give Phelps a break, don't crucify him for his midseason swims. Wait for the Big Meets & let's see how he swims.
Ande, I totally agree that the midseason swims don't matter (much). That is why I prefaced the put up or shut up statement with, "This is the second biggest swimmeet in the 4 year cycle." I don't think that his inconsistency up to this point matters. I DO think it matters if this meet is flop.
I really am excited to see how he swims. I think he will have some really good swims and a few disappointing ones.
Phelps did, apparently on August 13 2008.
"Eat, sleep and swim. That's all I can do," Phelps, who won two more gold medals today, told NBC when asked what he needs to win medals. "Get some calories into my system and try to recover the best I can."
That is his actual quote. Strange that the NY Post has no actual quotes from Phelps or his nutritionist on the details of his diet. I can see the interview now
Investigative reporter: How many calories do you eat in a day?
Phelps: I don't know, a lot.
Investigative reporter: Would you say you eat 8,000 calories in a day?
Phelps: I don't know.
Investigative reporter: Would you say you eat 10,000 calories in a day?
Phelps:
Investigative reporter: Would you say you eat 12,000 calories in a day?
Phelps:
Investigative reporter: Wow, 12,000 calories!
Other quality articles written by the 12,000 calorie author:
- Phelps' pig secret: he's Boy Gorge
- Rat crawls up man's leg on subway
- Even Beckham Can't Save Soccer in America
- Duke coach slam dunks Obama over NCAA picks
Closer to the topic, I am glad to see that Phelps has top times going into Worlds. I guess he has actually been training or something.
It looks like that details of the opening ceremony of the 2011 FINA World Championships in Shanghai are not closely guarded, unlike the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Here are some of the pictures of the full rehearsal on July 14th:
Worlds begin in less than a week
Anyone looking forward to following the excitement?
Open water swimming has already started. I have looked at the Chinese sports TV site but couldn't find a video link to today's Women's 10K which Keri-Anne Payne won. This is a real pity because that site has complete video coverage for all other events including water polo competitions.
Alex Meyer finished in the money (4th) so to speak and locked a slot for London 2012 -- www.dailynewsofopenwaterswimming.com/.../official-results-of-mens-10k-world.html -- the only American OW swimmer to do so. I gather the other 15 slots for each of men and women get determined at a later date. Does anyone know why they are limiting the London 2012 10K to only 25 swimmers? I know the Serpentine's a bit constrained on space, but I would think it could support a bigger field than that.
I suspect it's not the venue that's the problem; it's the overall Olympic athlete cap that FINA is bumping up against. Same reason why we don't get a women's 1500M or men's 800M and the number of relays are very limited*- the IOC thinks there are already too many swimmers and swim events, and if we let the number of swimmers grow more, they'd have to reduce the slots for table tennis or synchronized trampoline or something.
*I wish the IOC would adopt the NCAA's 'qualify four people individually, and they can swim a relay' rule because it would make for more relays at the meet, some of which can probably make finals, while keeping the athlete cap in place. Even if you get the occasional oddball entry where your 10M tower diver ends up swimming a freestyle leg for said patched together relay.
