The Blogstroke

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In case you missed it, I wrote a column on Nathan Adrian when he was in town for the Kitsap Sports Hall of Fame. Adrian is in his junior year at Cal.

The school also recently honored its national champions, which included Adrian, and you can read about that here.

Also, here’s a story we ran a few days ago on Tara Kirk Sell who is starting a $25,000 endowment to keep elementary school swimming alive in the Bremerton School District. A more detailed story will run later this week.

And, Puget Sound Swim Club had an outstanding summer season. You can read about it here.

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All of Nathan Adrian’s hard work, not to mention his gold medal as part of the 4×100 free relay at the world championships in July, helped him be named to the U.S. National team for 2010.

It means, Adrian will continue to receive a monthly stipend as part of the ‘A’ team from USA Swimming, which also covers travel expenses for its swimmers. You can see the entire list here.

In other news, world and Olympic champion backstroker Aaron Piersol believes those records that were aided by the full-length swimsuits will fall. And more quickly than people think. 

Piersol said in a story on eurosport.yahoo.com, that people have a taste of going fast in the water, and want that feeling again and world records will be broken next year.

You can read the full story here.

Also, Dara Torres will have hernia surgery, Natalie Coughlin is on Dancing With The Stars, and Masters swimmers are split on the whole bodysuit debacle.

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King Aquatic Club coach Sean Hutchison, the 2009 world championship women’s team coach, is set to coach Fullerton Aquatics Sports Team (FAST) elite program in September.

Earlier this week, USA Swimming tabbed two USA Swimming clubs, North Baltimore Aquatic Club and FAST as the second and third clubs to join the Professional and Post-Grad Training Centers. The clubs will profice services for elite swimmers. SwimMAC was the first club given that distinction in 2006.

The USOC will provide financial and other support to the clubs and provide athletes acces to training, travel, educational opportunities and more. North Baltimore, of course, is headed by Bob Bowman who trains Michael Phelps. Also, five-time Olympic coach Jon Urbanchek will also join FAst staff in May.

You can read the full story here.

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Here’s a story by the Seattle Times on Cullen Jones’ visit to Seattle on Wednesday as part of a six-city tour to promote swimming safety.

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When the decision to ban high-tech swimsuits was handed down by the National Federation of State High School Associations on Tuesday, Central Kitsap swim coach Steve Lehaie couldn’t have been more pleased.

“Thank God! It’s a blessing,” Lehaie said on Wednesday. “I saw some pretty horrendous swims at state that the kids come out of absolutely nowhere (and drop) many seconds in an event. I thought it was pretty bad to allow them.”

The federation’s board of directors agreed with its swimming and diving rules committee to ban the suits for high school competition — effective immediately. Practice begins Aug. 24 for the upcoming girls swim season. Read the rest of this entry »

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Here we go with the last individual event for Nathan at the worlds. He’s swimming in the finals of the 50 free. Fred Bousquet, Cesar Cielo, or could it be Nathan! We’ll see in just a moment.

Good start, maybe a fraction slower than the rest of the field, for Nathan. It’s so hard to tell who is ahead in a race like this, but 100 free champion Cesar Cielo pulled it out in the final few meters for the win. Nathan finished in sixth with a time of 21.46. It’s the same time he swam in the semis, which is a personal best.  Cielo won in a championship record time of 21.08 followed by Fredrick Bousquet silver in 21.21 and the bronze went to countryman Amaury Leveraux in 21.49.

I don’t think he can be disappointed. He is so young, and is getting so much exposure to elite competition it will only make him better. I haven’t heard if Nathan’s been named to the 400 medley relay tomorrow, and probably won’t find out until before the start.

ALSO: I just wanted to let you know that I will be on vacation this week. The Blogstroke will continue without me, so don’t worry. I will talk to you next week!

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Olympic gold medalist Cullen Jones, who is currently competing at the world swimming championships, will be in Seattle Aug. 12 as part of the national water safety campaign. Jones will begin his day with a breakfast with Seattle community leaders where he will be the keynote speaker at the Hilton Seattle Downtown from 7:30-8:30 a.m.

Jones will be at the Garfield Community Center from 11 a.m. to noon for a youth assembly. Following the assembly, Jones will give five children their first swim lesson. He is slated to throw out the first pitch at the Mariners game later that night.

Jones and USA Swimming Foundation, along with ConocoPhillips, have joined forces to promote water safety in order to reduce the number of drowning deaths in the country in children. This week a 13-year-old Poulsbo boy drowned at Wildcat Lake. The numbers are especially high for minority children, USA Swimmng said. Six out of 10 African-American children don’t know how to swim, while 56 percent of Hispanic and Latino children are unable to swim.

Joining Jones will be USA Swimming Executive Director & CEO of USA Swimming Foundation Chuck Wielgus, and John Cruzat, National Diversity Specialist.

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UPDATE: Here’s what I could find on the NBC interview of Nathan. It’s in the broadcast replay from today’s coverage. It took a long time for it to buffer and play, so keep that in mind. One more recap I found from swimnetwork.com’s The Morning Show. You can watch the entire show, or skip ahead to about the five minute mark to hear what Garrett McCaffrey and Peter Busch say about Nathan and the 50 free final.

UPDATE: NBC’s Andrea Kramer interviewed Nathan and Cullen, following their races. Here’s what Nathan said.

NBC: What’s it going to take for you (and Cullen) to even get on the medal stand?

Nathan: (Laughing) Right now, it’s a 21-low or even 20.-high. Obviously the sprinters here are really going off, setting world records. I think we can do it but it’s going to take a great swim.

UPDATE: Wow! Nathan went a personal best 21.46 in his heat to qualify for tomorrow’s finals. Very good start by Nathan, with Fred Bousquet touching first (21.21) and Cesar Cielo second (21.35). Nathan is seeded seventh in the finals. I’ll post more on Nathan later, and be sure to check out the Kitsap Sun and kitsapsun.com for stories from worlds.

UPDATE: Cullen Jones broke the AR in his race, finishing 3rd in 21.40. I guess Jones has been sick and was quarantined from the rest of the team earlier this week. 

UPDATE: All right, here we go. The 50 free semifinals are coming up. NBC finally got off its Michael Phelps kick and did a piece on Nathan Adrian. I will try to see if I can find it on the web, later, and post it here. It was pretty good!

UPDATE: Just found out that FINA has moved up the swimsuit-ban from May to Jan. 1, 2010. Good. You can read about it here.

UPDATE: Four-time world champion Aaron Piersol just won the 200 backstroke. Japan’s Ryosuke Irie took silver and Ryan Lochte earned the bronze. Oh, and yes, the world record was broken……whatever….

Sorry it’s been so long since I was able to post here. I had technical difficulties last night so I couldn’t even watch Nathan’s prelim in the 50 free. That’ll teach me to use a PC instead of a Mac.

Nathan had the sixth fastest time in 21.68 seconds last night. He’s swimming in the second semifinal heat, which is upcoming, right next to 100 free champion Cesar Cielo of Brazil.

I hope you’ve had a chance to see my most recent story on Nathan, which you can read here. I haven’t talked to him since before the U.S. Nationals, but we’ve been communicating through e-mails. I always appreciated it when our local swimmers took the time to respond during a major competition like that. The Kirk sisters did the same thing for me. I guess swimmers are just classy people!

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Five-time Olympic medalist Janet Evans said the swimsuit controversy is making a mockery of the sport.

You can read what she had to say here. She had some pretty tough comments about FINA as well. Lest we forget, Evans knows a thing or two about competing in an unfair sport. Evans had to go up against the East Germans — who could make MLB’s steroid controversy look like a blip on the radar screen.

USA Today columnist Christine Brennan wrote this story regarding the suit fiasco. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there are 2,679 stories on the suits on the Internet.

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Suffering his first disappointment at the world championships in Rome, Nathan Adrian narrowly misses qualifying for the finals of the 100 free on Wednesday.

Nathan was strong in the first 50, with a split of 22.66, but slowed down in the final stretch to finish in 48.13, slower than his qualifying time from the world trials in Indianapolis to place him 10th. Top 8 go to finals. Alain Bernard of France is the top qualifier in 47.27.

I don’t know if Nathan and his coaches were expecting the finals time to be a sub-48, or for Bernard to nearly break the world record, 47.05. He is always so good at calculating where he needs to be. Honestly, however, one has to think that you go fast in the semis because the finals are the following night. You’d have time to recover. 

I’m a little stunned to be honest.

Nathan will have another shot at an individual event in the 50 free, which begins Friday. Plus, he should be named to Saturday’s 400 medley relay as well.

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