Out-Of-The-Pool Drama Tops Swimming Headlines On The Week That Was

PHOENIX, Arizona, October 6. SWIMMING was front and center around the world in the mainstream media last week, with the news of a certain Olympic legend’s run-in with the law. We’ll get to that later in the show as we count down the top five swimming headlines of the past week. Let’s get things started with our number five headline, concerning a big move for one of USA Swimming’s best freestylers.

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After a year training at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club under Bob Bowman’s direction, Matt McLean is returning to the coach that helped him earn a spot on the 2012 Olympic team. Mark Bernardino is now a coach at the University of South Carolina, and McLean announced that he’s moving to Columbia to work with Bernardino again. Bernardino had previously worked with McLean at the University of Virginia, where McLean became an NCAA champion. After Bernardino ended his longtime career at Virginia, McLean moved to Baltimore to train with the likes of Michael Phelps, Conor Dwyer, Yannick Agnel and more. McLean had a pretty good year, qualifying for last summer’s Pan Pacific championships and also bound for next year’s world championships. Before that, he’ll be swimming at the short course world championships in Qatar in December, which will be his first test of the reunion with Bernardino.

Number four on our countdown concerns the fine handed to Naoya Tomita after the Japanese breaststroker stole a professional photographer’s camera at the Asian Games. Tomita will pay about $1,000 US dollars for the infraction, and the Japanese swimming federation is still pondering the punishment it will give Tomita. Though Japan has a strong group of top-flight breaststrokers, Tomita has been at or near the top for a few years. He was the 2010 short course world champion in the 200 breaststroke and won that event at the 2010 Asian Games as well. Though he didn’t make the 2012 Olympic team he has always been in the top three or four in Japan.

The FINA World Cup is returning to France next year, and that announcement is number three on this week’s countdown. FINA President Julio Maglione made the announcement last week in a press conference before the Moscow stop of the current World Cup series, but didn’t say which city would serve as the host. France had been a part of the various iterations of the World Cup for many years going back to the 1980s all the way to 2002, but for whatever reason did not stay on in the past 12 years. The meet has continued to grow in significance, particularly in terms of the money being offered to athletes. Having a stop on the World Cup in Western Europe might increase attendance as many of the world’s best live in Western Europe, and France has a very high number of superstars that could add prestige to the event. The series has only gone as far west as Berlin, Germany, which dropped out of the series a couple of years ago.

It should come as no surprise to those that followed the Asian Games that Kosuke Hagino was named the MVP of the entire event, and that’s number two on our show. Hagino was easily the top swimmer at the meet, winning four golds, a silver and two bronze medals. Across all sports, Hagino was still clearly the best athlete at the multi-sport competition in South Korea. Going into the meet, the focus wasn’t on Hagino too much as the media hype touted the Sun Yang-Tae Hwan Park rivalry. But Hagino quickly had the spotlight turn on him by beating Sun and Park in the 200 free and nearly beating Sun in the 400 free. He also won both individual medleys and was part of Japan’s winning 800 free relay. Despite the MVP award, Hagino has said he’s not 100 percent pleased with his performances at the Asian Games, mentioning his silver and bronze medal swims as races that could have been better. In any case, Hagino is now going full steam ahead to next year’s world championships, where we’ll see if he can fulfill his goal of being the next Michael Phelps and reap seven medals in Russia.

It’s time for the number one headline of the week, and of course it’s the saga surrounding Michael Phelps’ DUI arrest in Baltimore last Tuesday. Reports indicate Phelps had been at a casino in the area for eight hours, and had been drinking alcohol as well. He was pulled over for driving 84 miles per hour in an area where the speed limit was 45 miles per hour. He was also cited for crossing double lane lines, and later failed a sobriety test. The DUI charge is Phelps’ second in 10 years. The first came in 2004 when he was 19 years old. Phelps apologized to the world via Twitter about 12 hours after his arrest, returning to Twitter on Sunday to announce that he’ll be entering rehab to deal with his personal issues and is taking a break from swimming. It appears his stint in rehab will be at an inpatient facility for six weeks. Just minutes before we began taping this show, USA Swimming announced that Phelps would serve a six-month suspension from competition though he’ll still be allowed to train with the North Baltimore Aquatic Club during that time. He’ll also be denied his monthly stipend from USA Swimming that he received as part of being on the national team, and in a joint agreement with USA Swimming, Phelps has withdrawn from next year’s world championship team. By not having an international competition to train for next year, we’ll see how it affects Phelps’ comeback and his supposed plans to swim in the Rio Olympics.

And there you have it. The top five swimming headlines of the past week. We’ll see if this week can top last week in terms of buzzworthy headlines.

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suriyan

9 years ago

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