My friend and former roommate, Richard Hortness, was on an NPR affiliate the other day talking about swimming and about what it’s like knowing you get to go to the 2008 Olympics. Here’s the mp3.

I found out yesterday that my former teammate (and roommate), Richard Hortness, is going to China for the 2008 Olympics. He placed third in prelims with a personal best time of 49.42 in the 100 metre freestyle and his fifth place finish in finals makes him one of the five swimmers who will make up the Canadian Mens 4×100 freestyle relay team.

Technically, Richard is the alternate, but will likely swim preliminary heats at Beijing.

Today he will be trying to win or come second in the 50 free. If he comes second and makes the FINA A time standard he will also compete in this event in Beijing.

Congratulations Richard, and good luck today!

Medicine Hat News Article Scan

Update: Richard won the 50 Free this afternoon too! Way to go Richard; good luck in Beijing.

My friends Vicki Chugg, and Richard Hortness are in Montreal this week swimming in the Canadian Olympic Trials. You can watch CBC’s coverage of the meet today and tomorrow (check your local listings). Good luck Vicki and Richard!

During my prime of swimming for the University of Lethbridge, my fastest time for the 50 meter freestyle (short course) was 24.59. It’s fun and amazing to watch the world’s best swimmers going four times that distance (and long course too) at the same pace. Even if you’re not a swimming fan, you can’t help but get excited as Michael Phelps shatters a world record.

Hit play or watch at YouTube.

Phelps broke five world records, including the one above, during the World Swimming Championships last week in Australia. (They ended April 1).

The Washington Post has an interesting article stating that 60% of new swim records have been set in the last two years, while the records set in track-and-field on the other hand, have been much more steady.

The Post’s explanation of how athletes can be improving in leaps and bounds in one sport but not in another boil down to, more funding, better coaching, and an older average age of high caliber swimmers. They say the typical body shape of swimmers has also been changing as of late.

As an aside, a former roommate and teammate of mine competed at Nationals (the Canadian ones) during the same time and won both the 50 and 100 meter freestyle events—a seriously awesome accomplishment (even though, it seems to me, he downplays it). Congratulations Richard.

Those of you that know me well, know that I love water sports. Last night my water polo team won the U of L intramurals finals in a victory so decisive, I didn’t actually find out the final score.

I’m not going to say it was easy. For one thing, we were missing a lot of players last night. One had bus trouble and wasn’t back from her swim meet in Vancouver, another had a concert to preform in - one that if he missed he would fail his music class. There were a couple other players that just sort of, stopped coming to the games, so that left us a person short and no subs.

It was 6 on 7 for the first half and we actually did really well, despite being shorthanded. However, near the beginning of the second half, our goalie swam up out of the water to make a save and then fell back under the water shaking with pain. Nobody could figure out what happened to him. I swam over as did a couple others and it turns out that he had one of the worst cramps in his calf that I’ve ever seen. It was pulsing up and down.

So that left us down to 5 players. I have to be honest—I was a little worried.

It turns out my fear was misplaced because it was at this point that we really started to pull ahead. It’s games like this one that remind me why I love water sports so much.

Update: Check out this great water polo flickr set by my friend John Lapins.

I’ve got a University of Lethbridge Alumni swim meet tomorrow morning. Should be loads of fun—I can hardly wait, but I’m not too thrilled about being on deck at 7:20am—At least the events are only 25’s and 50’s.

When I first arrived in Québec I decided to count all my laps in the pool in French. I’ve gotten pretty good at counting by 25’s but I still make the occasional mistake.

While counting them today, after mixing up how far I had gone, this thought occured to me and made me smile.

There are three kinds of people in this world: Those that can count, and those that can’t.

Bon journey!

Last week I won an informal race against my friend Stefan doing the 100m IM after our water polo match. He is going back to his home country of Germany today and last night after our last game of water polo he challenged me to a rematch, only this time we would swim something a little longer—the 800m freestyle.

It’s no secret that I am not a long distance swimmer. However, I let my confidence in combination with my unbridled enthusiasm get the best of me and agreed to the race. I figured that if I could average 45 seconds every two lengths (or 100’s on 1:30) I’d be fine.

I loaded up a nice foot long pizza sub from Subway just before the race. I wanted to have plenty of energy for the longest race I’ve ever done. (Well that’s not true, I’ve done longer timed events but never anything that I considered a race against anyone else but myself) As I was sitting there, eating my lunch, I ran into one of the lifeguards who swims quite a bit and told her about the upcoming event. When I explained my plan to do 100’s on 1:30, she warned me that Stefan was pretty fast and that when she swims with him, he does them on 1:25 and that wasn’t even at race pace. Hmmm, this might be a little trickier than I had anticipated.

I actually paced myself pretty well, but towards the end, I could feel that pizza sub wanting to have an unwelcome reunion. Almost needless to say, Stefan really showed me up in the 800m Freestyle. I didn’t even make my goal time of 12:00, but if I had, it wouldn’t even have been enough.

Now the score was 1 - 1. We needed to have the rubber match to determine a true and final winner between Germany and Canada.

“50 Free?”, I pondered. He knew I am a sprinter through and through but he put into consideration that I was quite tired. He agreed, and I just hoped I had enough left in me to still get up to top speed.

It’s not an exaggeration to say I was extremely tired as I prepared for our final showdown, but there’s something magical that happens in the sprint. Getting up on the blocks, preparing for the lightning round, it’s as if my body forgets its limitations and I an unseen power takes over. I don’t know what it is, but when it comes to the sprint I can’t help but swim at 100%. Despite how tired I was, I was excited for the rematch. The moment I dove in I could feel the shortage of blood in my head. I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake as tiny shooting stars streaked across the pool floor. Was I going to pass out in the middle of the pool? I certainly wasn’t going to slow down to find out.

I raced into the first turn and whipped out of it as fast as I ever do. I could see Stefan just crossing under the flags. Though light headed I pressed on pulling and kicking just as fast as ever. It felt like a new record for me, and in the end, it was a solid victory for me. Stefan is a fast swimmer, when it comes to distance, but he’s no match for my sprinting, even when I am on death’s door with fatigue.

So victory goes to the Canadian! :) But as a parting gift I gave Stefan my U of L Horns swim cap. Tonight while he’s flying home to Germany, I’m going to sleep like a baby.

My team is the University of Lethbridge Intramurals water polo champions again this semester! We just won our final game against the “lifeguard” team. Now we’re going out as a team to celebrate.

My old roommate and good friend Richard Hortness is on the UNLV Swim Team and last night helped the team win its second straight conference title at the 2006 MWC Swimming & Diving Championships at Oklahoma City Community College. It’s never been done before, but the UNLV men’s team won all 5 of the relays. Way to go Richard!

See his blog post telling a little about it.

If you’re wondering about how the announcing went… it started out a little rough and got better as the afternoon progressed. I was kind of nervous at first, just speaking into the mic and hearing my voice echo across the pool. The stands were pretty full and there were swimmers and officials all over the deck. I was sitting at a desk up in the stands. I welcomed everyone out and then I said, please stand for the playing of our national anthem.

And then it happened. Probably the most embarrassing thing possible. In my nervousness I didn’t even realize anything was wrong. I could hear my friend Vicki laughing from the pool deck and I had the sinking feeling she was laughing at me. The song played on. Then about 30 to 45 seconds into the song, Vicki walks out where I can see her and yells up to me, “Jeff that’s the American National anthem”. Could my face be any more red?

Apparently when queueing the music I rewound the tape on the wrong side. Now the decision had to be made, do I just play the rest of the song out and have the Canadian National Anthem play after, or do I stop it now and fast forward to the next song? I elected to stop the tape and just announce my mistake, “Oops, that was the American Anthem”. The people of laughed politely at my blunder but I was more worried that the meet would get started late because of my fumbling around with the tape player.

There I was trying to find the Canadian National Anthem on the tape meanwhile everyone else was just standing there, waiting for the music to play. Finally I realized I needed to flip the tape over and rewind it, and once that was on its way I used the moment to announce some of the money winners from the races yesterday.

I have to say, it was really embarrassing but things did pick up after that. I slaughtered quite a few names but by the end of the meet while I was still butchering their names, however, I just did it confidently and quickly so that most people probably didn’t notice hopefully didn’t care.

I’m glad I went; I had a good time. I’ll be doing the announcing for the finals again today.

This photo of me was taken at a swim meet here at the U of L a couple years ago, but this weekend the Pronghorns are once again hosting their annual swim meet at the Max Bell Pool. I’ve been asked to do the announcing for the finals on Saturday and Sunday. Go Horns!

Here is the photo of my water polo team after winning the 2005 Intramurals Finals.

My team won the University of Lethbridge’s intramurals water polo championships for this semester tonight!

Shaun Eden, one of the guys on the team, is trying to organize a club team next semester that will play against the University of Calgary’s and University of Alberta’s teams. Too bad I most likely won’t be around.

This Monday will be the last intramurals water polo game of the semester. My team is in the finals and it’s going to be quite the match. We’re going up against the number 1 team and to my knowledge I don’t think they’ve lost a game. The last time we played them we barely lost but I happened to be held up and missed the first half, so maybe things will be different this time.

As for last Monday’s semi-final game, it started out pretty rocky when they scored on us twice right off the bat. We came back strong though and in the end we won 15 to 5. Not a bad score for a semi-finals match.