Jessicah Schipper to coach Ken Wood: "You are so fired!"

She really didn't say that; I was just pretending to be an Australian headline writer for they love shrill headlines with lots of drama.

Let's say that you are a globally ranked swimmer and you found out that your swim coach was selling your workouts to a Chinese competitor and even the invited the competitor down for a swim with you. Let's say that you and this Chinese swimmer meet up at the Olympics and she hands you your bum and you place third. Would you be mad?

Jessicah Schipper says in this Age.com article: "...I was aware of that. He had told me about it, so it has nothing to do with that," Schipper said, adding that their parting was amicable.

"It's just I'd been doing exactly the same thing for 10 years. It was pretty much just the same old, same old, and I just feel it's time for a change.

"I need a new outlook on swimming, probably a younger coach's perspective, I suppose."

She is considering joining Stephan Widmer, who has coached her Queensland teammates Libby Trickett and Leisel Jones, with whom (along with backstroker Emily Seebohm) she won a gold medal in the 4 x 100 medley relay in Beijing. ..." [Link]

FINA World Championship Day 13 - What I should have been talking about today

Bad day at work and no pool to jump into that was less than 10 minutes away. I am still rattled over what a bad day it was but I am OK now. Day 13 was a very seminal day for planetary swimming for ten world records have been broken so far and lots of lessons learned about the dark arts of American swimming.

Summary of Day 13: We had Magnini and Hayden tie in the 100 free. Phelps got his his fourth gold in the 200 IM in a time of 1.54.86. Katie Hoff proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is not a land dwelling animal by dominating her leg in the 4 x 200 free relay assisting in taking 0.73 off Germany's world record mark. Jessicah Schipper gold a gold medal in the 200m butterfly giving the host country, Australia, the same amount of gold medals that, er, Michael Phelps has? Australia better throw a party for those girls post World Championships as a way of saying thank you.

Here is a nice recap from Generation Q: [Link]