Two years ago he showed up to his first Masters swim meet wearing board shorts! - Now he is tied for tenth in the nation in the 50-free!

One-minute, twenty-seconds into this Floswimming video, Garrett quickly interviews one of our SCAQ relay teams; (We all look good in black, don't you think?). Our freestyler for that relay participated in his first ever Masters swim meet at UCLA just two years ago swimming a 25.88 in the 50-free while wearing a pair of board shorts.

Fast-fwd to last weekend and he swam a 22.9 to tie for tenth-place in his age group at Masters Nationals. (That is so Rocky!) Not bad for swimming for only two years.

We have a another success story like this on the female side who did quite well at Nationals setting a personal best in the 50-free after participating in her first meet just 7-weeks ago. That is courageous for she made the race against herself. (People who get stage-fright know what I am talking about.)

SCAQ is coalescing into a very fast, a very eclectic, and a very unified team. We are snappy dressers too with out black suits and our black silicon caps. (We don't wear no stinkin' latex.) We need more SCAQ swimmers to show up and join the party. Look how happy everybody is in the video that Garrett shot above. It was not about the race but rather the shared experience.

We need more SCAQ swimmers to compete. Just nine of us showed up at SPMA SCY Regionals in a club that boasts over 1000 swimmers and still we got a sixth place trophy for our efforts. That was so cool being part of a team effort that yielded a trophy.

Come be part of it. What is even more fun than competing in a challenging event is being on a relay that wins a ribbon or medal. My best medal, and the only first place medal, I have ever received at a championship was on a relay. John, Doug, Dan and I stormed it at SCM Regionals and the accomplishment was exhillerating. (When was the last time you felt exhillerated?)

Join us!

(Thanks to Chris B. And Erik H. for sending me this video.)

Flowswimming's coverage of the 2009 'USMS Master SCY Nationals' was unsurpassed!

Rowdy Gaines in Lane 6; Paul Carter is in the mix too but the whole field is outclassed by Rowdy's experience and strength. Even though Rowdy's talent was simply overwhelming, how flattering it must have been for Paul Carter and the others to be in the same heat with Rowdy Gaines.

Rowdy stays so high in the water and his pull is just as strong as his leg strength. It is an amazing combination and it was all brought to us by Floswimming.

What Floswimming really nailed with the USMS Masters SCY Nationals coverage is that they caught the spirit and the exuberance of the meet rather than just focusing on the results and records. That is something very hard to capture as a journalist and/or a filmmaker.

It's my belief that the USMS and the Local Masters Swimming Committees across the country should seriously consider handing any and all filming rights of local swim meets to Floswimming. To do so would grow Masters swimming exponentially!!

You hit it out of the park, Garrett & Company! 300 foot mark!

Welcome to the Renaissance: Swim Technique and Swim related Information is Consolidating

Turns - Flip-Turn Eyes from Glenn Mills on Vimeo.

Quality information about swimming is consolidating exponentially and becoming extraordinarily accessible. In fact, I think we are entering into not just a "swimming Renaissance" but a global one. I know that is a weird thing to say during this "Great Recession" that the planet is experiencing but perhaps some new economic paradigm emerges that takes us all to the next level.

I am going to make a bold statement here and declare that 6-months worth of content at the following sites will provide a swimmer with more knowledge and more useful information than a swimmer would have been exposed between the years 1900 and 2000.

That's not an exaggeration for today I can reference a video shot in the past 10 years of just about any gold medal swim in the Olympics, World Championships, European Championships, US Nationals etc, etc, just by plugging in a search term at You Tube.

For instance there is GoSwim.TV: Glenn Mills has extensively filmed and indexed the technical nuances of our sport making each swimming clip a Zen experience. New swimmers have learned how to do flipturns just by watching his stuff and this is just the free content.

Swimming World: though they keep most of the crown jewels in print or for sale, the results database, the swim conversation calculator, and most of all the cataloging of the successes and failures of just about every word class swimmer provides not just a bench mark for greatness but also what can go wrong. The second mouse gets the cheese and what could go wrong and has gone wrong and it is covered there.

Then there is Floswimming which is like the intellectual equivalent of some serious "swimming industrial espionage." Garret goes for it and he takes chances! He walks right up to the line and sometimes his toes cross over it; (Actually, that might be an under statement or one could say Garret has some pretty long toes), but the majority of his videos deliver insights that have never been put to paper or press and they are valuable.

Tara Kirk: “I have confirmed that USA Swimming knew about the positive drug test before the deadline to submit the names.”

The New York Times quoted her so it's credible: "...Hardy, 21, was informed of the failed drug test Monday, which was also the deadline for national governing bodies to submit their rosters for the Beijing Games. Kirk, in an exchange of e-mail messages, wrote, “I have confirmed that USA Swimming knew about the positive drug test before the deadline to submit the names.” She declined to say whom she spoke with. ..."

USA Swimming did not submit the names of Kirk and Lara Jackson, who finished third in the 50 freestyle at the trials, as alternates on its roster, to be summoned only if Hardy loses her appeal. ..." [Link]

Memo to USA Swimming: If the above is correct, the perception of ethics and morals within the organization are looking way beyond sketchy at this point. You have an anti-trade lawsuit on the horizon with TYR, you failed to follow your own rules in determining the proper line of succession if a swimmer or swimmers fail a drug test, You have bullied Floswimming which is one of the most popular swim sites on the net and finally for a government sanctioned National Governing Body you are the least transparent non-profit I have ever seen.

How often do non-profit governing bodies get sued anyway? Apparently, Tara Kirk, looks pretty amped up to perhaps make it another lawsuit too. Could this become a class action lawsuit with Kirk, Jackson, and Weir on the list?

All of this nonsense in just the past six months as well. Pathetic!

One has to ask how culpable USADA/USA Swimming are for this Olympic team mess-up!

I spoke with someone close to this situation by email this morning and they filled me into the missed details by the two organizations that are suppose to serve the athletes.

On July 21st the IOC required an Olympic team roster from USA Swimming. Yesterday, three days past that deadline it was leaked that Jessica Hardy had tested positive for a banned substance. (Newsweek reported that it may have been a stimulant which could be as simple as an antihistamine or something more insidious as meth.)

The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) performed the test and obviously notified USA Swimming before the July 21st deadline. One would think that either USA Swimming would have pushed USADA to deliver results well before they had to declare a de facto team or that USA Swimming would have scheduled Olympic Trials earlier enough to ensure that all their athletes rights would be respected.

In project management textbooks they talk of deliverables and milestones that should signed off and closely managed. I didn't see that here.

From USA Swimming's perceived "secret deals" with the Wasserman Media Group (WMG), the accusations from TYR that USA Swimming is engaging in anti-trust tactics with Speedo, and the bullying of Floswimming. One has to wonder who is running the shop there!

Five ways technology is changing the next Olympics

My favorite tech changing 'gizmo' for the Olympics is the camera that can take 2,000 photos per second. Talk about a photo finish! That 1 second of static motion, if converted to live action footage, would be about 65 seconds of viewing time.

However, this one really stood out. From the Io9 blog : "... China has claimed that they will "attack" and shut down websites that broadcast Olympic events illegally. No one is sure if this means they intend to attack other countries' websites or private sites hosted internationally. If they do, it could be the first case of open international cyber warfare. [Link]

Reductio ad absurdum or imagine this: Floswimming is interviewing Eddie Reese by the side of the pool but accidentally the camera catches a tiny splash of water from a Jamaican swimmer's flipturn while she is warming down in the secondary pool.

Suddenly, the weight of the Chinese military, with NBC and USA Swimming's blessing, let slip the dogs of war and Chinese networking experts attack Floswimming from the other side of the Planet for weeks on end. They use a classic "Denial of Service" (DOS) attack and it brings Floswimming's servers down to their knees. There was no cease and desist or nasty letter from USA Swimming, there was no due process either, just cyber-warfare at the behest of a corporation.

What would Dick Cheney do if that happened?

As silly as that sounds, and it is a silly scenario, but why is it that a corporation's content can suddenly be protected by ordering a military attack without due process or even a cease and desist letter?

Hmm, Perhaps because it's China?

NBC - Just turn the cameras and the interviews over to 'Floswimming' please!

I am not happy with NBCs coverage of the Olympic Trials; It's garbage! It seems rushed, perfunctory, and the hosts; (Rowdy excluded), even get some of their facts wrong. One could only wish that NBC would hand the cameras and microphones over to Floswimming to do it right. [Link]

Now, why I am so dissapointed about the swim coverage is that Executive producer, David Neal, recalled Ebersol telling him, "We ought to be doing swimming every night." [International Herald Tribune: [Link]

Ebersol thinks it is "Michael Phelps' charisma!" Huh?, Charisma? no offense but Phelps' bulldog has more charisma than Michael. People want to see the bodies, the water, the races and the interviews. Floswimming has got all of the above totally wired!

I hope the Olympic coverage is far better than what we are seeing. Also, I hopeful that they choose some journalists; (read as Floswimming staff), to augment Rowdy Gaines instead of embarrassing him.

Michael Phelps 400 IM at the 'Columbus Grand Prix'

Attention USA Swimming or WMG: DO NOT PULL THIS VIDEO! If you do, you will only alienate us again and I hope you have learned something over the Floswimming fiasco.

SwimNetwork has not made any video available thus far of the Columbus Grand Prix available so I am posting this Michael Phelps 400 IM here. Mega thanks go out to swimmingismylife
over at You Tube.

There is a 'plugin' for the Firefox browser called "Download helper." With it you can download videos from You tube; or other sites that contain video, directly to your hard drive and view at your leisure. I am bringing this up because I have a bad feeling that when I wake up tomorrow this video will be gone. Hence, get the 'plugin' and use it for those videos you would like study so as to make you a better swimmer.

Floswimming gtes angry letter from USA Swimming

UPDATE: Post edited to remove hyperbole. Never post something in a hurry.

Floswimming lost it's USA Swimming swim meet credentials because Grant videoed part of a meet thereby breaking broadcast rules. Here is a letter USA Swimming sent him. [Link]

Is 'Timed Finals' up for sale?

From Lane 9 News: "... PHOENIX, Arizona, December 24. IN what appears to be financial concerns that could affect a landmark venture between the Wasserman Group (WMG) and three of United States Olympic Committees' national governing bodies (USA Swimming, USA Track and Field, and USA Gymnastics), WMG is shopping its Online Sports Network in lieu of an expected eight-figure loss for 2007. ..." [Lane 9 quotes the Sports Business Journal as their reference.]

Consequently, they want to sell Sportnet.com for 50-million-dollars to obviously cover some losses. [Link]

That figure is mind boggling for I don't see 50-million dollars of product there. Heck, even my site has more swim content than Sportnet and Floswimming has a 100 times more content as well. Therefore, I have to assume that their primary assets are the contracts they have with those that produce content but in relation to other content providers, it is still anemic.

For instance, take Movielink.com as an example as a content provider. Movielink.com was founded as a joint venture between Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios, and Warner Bros., who were responding to consumers' adoption of high-speed Internet access well before iTunes came to market. Movielink.com had far more contracts with several major movie studios and foreign distributors. They sold and rented 100's upon 100's of movies per month. This includes documentaries, animation, shorts, extreme sports, etc. In August of 2007 movie rental giant Blockbuster acquired Movielink.com for a mere 6.6-million-dollars. Sportnet has nowhere near the content nor the contracts that Movielink had access to nor such an advanced e-commerce infrastructure. Hence, where is the equity in Sportnet? [CNN article on the Movielink.com sale Link]

Timed Finals, along with Sportnet.com is owned by The Wasserman Media Group as well. I am assuming that the site was purchased for the sole purpose of augmenting the USA Swimming deal. Will Timed Finals be sold if Sportnet.com is sold since it is seemingly one it's properties?

USA Swimming should have cut a deal with WCSN and Swimming World instead.