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Lochte Laughs Loudest In Shanghai

Dec 30, 2011  - Craig Lord

Lane lines from 2011 -  a trawl through the aquatic headlines of the past year: July and August 

JULY

1: James Magnussen (AUS) clocks the fourth fastest short-course 100m ever by an Australian in Adelaide, his 46.98 delivering a maiden national s/c crown

1: At Scottish Gas National Open Championships in Glasgow, double Olympic champion claims 800m freestyle in a solid 8:23.46 that suggests speedy challenge for the world crown a few weeks later

2: The inconsistency in anti-doping treatment throughout FINA nations is highlighted again by the cases of the latest four Brazilian athletes, including Olympic and world champion Cesar Cielo, to test positive but get no more than a warning - though the story will not end there

2: At the Australian short-course nationals in Adelaide, 15-year-old Yolane Kukla clocks 57.44 to win 100m butterfly and 24.22 for 50m free victory; Kylie Palmer on 4:01 to retain 400m free crown; James Magnussen takes 200m free in 1:44

2: Michael Phelps clocks 1:47 200 free at Canada Cup, his last blast before Shanghai world titles and the rematch with Paul Biedermann … the American will finish ahead of the German but both will be beaten by Ryan Lochte (USA)

3: Kylie Palmer clocks 1:55.07 to add the 200m free to a treasure trove that includes the 400m and 800m crowns at the Australian Short Course Championships in Adelaide 

4: Olympic and world champion Michael Phelps cruises back to the helm of the world rankings with a 51.32 win over 100m 'fly at the Canada Cup

4: The trouble with love: Justin Wright is 17; he swims - he falls in love; then wins a landmark legal battle to be a member of the New Zealand swim federation and therefore be eligible for team selection without his parents permission; Wright's girlfriend is wrong according to his parents Paul and Sandy, who feel their teenager is too young for 24-year-old Rhiannon Jeffrey, a former US Olympic relay swimmer now a member of the West Auckland Aquatic Club; parents deny boy right to compete; boy sues them and wins and has the right to accept team selections should he earn them

4: FINA presses for an urgent Court of Arbitration appeal hearing before world titles in Shanghai if urgent investigations conclude that Brazil was wrong to issue only warnings to four swimmers, including Cesar Cielo, who tested positive for furosemide

5: Henrique Barbosa and Nicholas Santos are dropped from the world championships roster by Brazil after they test positive for a banned substance at the Maria Lenk Trophy last month; Cerdeira and Macedo step in

5: Brazilian TV tells viewers that the Anna Terra pharmacy alleged to have contaminated a supplement said to have caused Cesar Cielo and three others to test positive denies the accusations; the word of a laboratory, however, will be key to Cielo being allowed to compete at and for world titles later that month 

6: FINA announces that it is to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the case of the four Brazilian swimmers, including Cesar Cielo, who tested positive for the banned substance furosemide but received only a warning from Brazilian authorities

7: Laure Manaudou, the Olympic 400m freestyle champion for France in 2004 who retired after finishing 8th in the same event at Beijing 2008, gets ready to take her first dip into competitive comeback waters in Georgia in the US under the guidance of coach Brett Hawke

7: Distance legend from Down Under Kieren Perkins adds his voice to Australian lament over a sink in fortunes in the class of iron men of the race pool when he says: "While you have ups and downs in talent in any sporting field over time, there's no doubt that right at the moment we're pretty deep down where distance swimming is concerned. There's no doubt it's an end of an era. Australia has dominated men's distance swimming for 20 years and we'll come out of London without any success in distance swimming, which is really quite disappointing."

10: Britain's swimmers and coaches celebrate victory at the European Junior Championships in Belgrade, the youth team of the 2012 Olympic host nation boasting six gold, six silver and seven bronze medals from five days of racing

11: Italian media report the impending break-up of Federica Pellegrini and Luca Marin on the eve of world titles

16: In Georgia, France's Laure Manaudou cracks 2mins over 200m freestyle with a 1:59.30 effort and goes 1:01.12 in 100m backstroke

13: CAS announce that hearing into anti-doping warning issued to Cesar Cielo (BRA) is to take place on July 20 with a decision due by 22nd before world title racing starts the 24th

13: Australia ships in its own meat for swimmers at world titles in Shanghai in an effort to avoid contaminated food

14: Chinese officials hand out a list of safe restaurants and hotels in Shanghai to combat fears over clenbuterol in the food chain

15: Michael Phelps predicts that a couple of world records will fall at world titles … turns out to be spot on

15: FINA votes on future world champ hosts: Kazan (RUS) in 2015; Guadalajara (MEX) in  2017

17: Ian Thorpe announces plans to make the Singapore round of the World Cup on November 4-5 his comeback race venue; media circus to follow 

17: On the eve of world titles in Shanghai, the term "boiling dumplings" makes it into the lexicon of aquatic description. "In China, a swimming pool is really just a place to escape the summer heat. If you really like a sport you do it year round, but very few people do this," said Zhang Yeduan, deputy head of the Hongkou Public Pool, Shanghai's largest. The common condition for the bather is "standing room only", swimmers no more than "boiling dumplings" who take to the water to cool down. The good news is that the world championships coincides with a Shanghai city council campaign to ensure that every child learns to swim as obesity among children grows in tandem with wealth in China.

Peking University, requires all students pass a 200m swim test. No swim, no theory of relativity, so to speak

17: Ryan Napoleon finds himself locked put of the 30-lapper at world titles in Shanghai from July 24 because Swimming Australia has nominated as its top man a swimmer who qualified on the FINA B, not A, target time

18: Kirsty Coventry (ZIM) is the victim of fraud but a day after money goes missing from her account the bank puts it back

18: Nick D'Arcy (AUS) is ordered to pay Aus$180,000 in compensation to Simon Cowley, the former swimmer who suffered grievous bodily harm at D'Arcy's hand in an assault back in 2008

19: Keri-Anne Payne (GBR) retains the world 10km marathon crown at the 14th FINA World Championships at Jinshan City Beach in Shanghai to become the first British athlete to qualify for the home Olympic Games in London 2012

19: Swim suit makers campaign to persuade FINA to put men back in body tops on the ludicrous grounds of equality in a sport in which men and women do not compete together (and would not even do so if rule changes one day lead to mixed relays in FINA competition)

20: Spyros Gianniotis (GRE) overhauls defending world champion Thomas Lurz (GER) on the closing stretch of the men's 10km marathon in Shanghai

21:  Andrew Gemmell, Ashley Twichell and Sean Ryan take the world 5km open water team title for the USA ahead of Australia and Germany in Shanghai

21: Olympic and world champion Cesar Cielo can defend his 50m and 100m freestyle world titles in Shanghai after the Court of Arbitration for Sport upholds the doping warning handed down by Brazil; banned before, Vinicius Waked is out for a year

21: An Extraordinary FINA Congress on constitutional change votes for an athlete to be included on the ruling Bureau for the first time in the international swimming federation's 103-year history - for a voice but no vote

21: FINA finds itself in hot water over safety in open water as world 25km champion Linsy Heister withdrew from the world-title battle in Shanghai because the water, at 30C, is just too hot for those racing 5.5 hours and more at extraordinary speed 

22: Michael Phelps survived the tale of the party and the pipe in his downtime but the paper than ran the story is sunk: the News of the World in Britain publishes for the last time after being closed down by Rupert Murdoch as the paper at the heart of the phone hacking scandal in Britain

22: King of the waves Thomas Lurz (GER) is in danger of being weighed down by his honours: after victory in the 5km world title race at Jinshan City Beach he is hailed as one of the all-time greats of open water - and then announces that he has pulled out of the 25km, an official statement citing heat and a slight shoulder pain as reasons for his decision

23: 25km racing at world titles in Shanghai goes ahead in dubious and worrying circumstances as three world champions and at least 10 others withdraw, including the USA team under official instruction, spirit of much-missed Fran Crippen ever present as racing unfolds in waters between 30.4 to 32C

23: SwimNews breaks the news on a Biological Passport scheme - after years of waiting for blood tests in the sport, a scheme is ready to be rubber stamped by the ruling FINA Bureau after the first "seven or eight" trial blood tests are conducted at the 14th World Championships in Shanghai

24-31: The 14th FINA World Championships, Shanghai, China

The Shanghai Wrap - fast swimming, facts and figures

How Swimmers Wrote A Shanghai Sonnet: final by final links to all events

AUGUST

2: The world championships are done but the form guide for the Olympic Games has already begun to shift shape as one of comeback crew, Brendan Hansen, wins 100m breaststroke US title in 1:00.08 in California

4: World champion Elizabeth Beisel backs up her best-ever textile victory in Shanghai with a 4:34.78 national crown at the aftermath US nationals

5: Elizabeth Beisel takes third US crown with 200m backstroke win

6: Brendan Hansen gives warning to the wider world that his comeback plans are going swimmingly with a 2:10.59 victory over 200m breaststroke on the last evening at US nationals

13: Martina Grimaldi (ITA) takes women's Olympic 10km marathon test event at the London 2012 venue in The Serpentine, Hyde Park, ahead of Eva Fabian (USA); men's race goes to unheralded Richard Weinberger (CAN) ahead of Thomas Lurz (GER) and Spyros Gianniotis (GRE)

14-15: New Zealand's Lauren Boyle picks up a brace of gold medals on the first two days at the Universiade, world student games, in Shenzhen, China - 400m and 800m free

19: The United States dominates World Student Games with 12 golds and 27 medals as the meet wraps up in Shenzhen, China

21: Championship records fall in eight of the 11 finals on the last day of racing at world junior championships in Lima, Peru, with the USA and Japan taking three gold medals each as the dominant nations at the six-day meet

22: FINA confirms that there were no positive tests at the world championships in Shanghai  back in July. Of 362 samples collected 311 were urine samples (including 43 EPO screenings) and 51 blood samples as part of a new biological passport scheme

22: Austria's anti-doping authorities set a September date for a second hearing in the case of Dinko Jukic, the swimmer who refused a test back in May 

23: The Palestinian Swimming Federation appeals to FINA for help after its Olympic Committee disbands the domestic aquatic body in a dispute that centres on accusations of abuse of Olympic committee powers over solidarity funding

26: Albert Subirats, the US-based Venezuelan who missed the world championships in July because he was reported to have missed three anti-doping tests, is cleared of any wrong-doing - turns out, as claimed, that the Venezuelan federation failed to file the paperwork; case raises questions for CAS

29: Two world-class swimmers are out of action after accident and injury. Gemma Spofforth, European 100m backstroke champion for Britain and former world champion, breaks her nose in a biking accident in Florida; and George Bovell (TRI), 200 medley Olympic bronze medallist in 2004 and now a freestyle sprint ace, suffers head injuries in a car crash in which a truck hit his BMW while he was driving home from training in Mayaro, Trinidad

30: The Troféu José Finkel, Brazil's national championship, get underway in Belo Horizonte with three of those at the centre of the doping storm of summer 2011, Cesar Cielo, Nicholas Santos and Henrique Barbosa back in the swim together

31: distance legend Janet Evans (USA) gets an early morning surprise for her 40th birthday - a 6am wake-up call from anti-doping testers now that the 1988 and 1992 Olympic champion is back in the race pool and aiming for US OLympic trials in 2012

31: The new team director for USA Swimming, Frank Busch, joins the FINA Coaches Commission for 2011-2013

31: The first day of finals at the Brazilian nationals are marred by failure of the timing system, criticism of the suit checker and the need for medical attention for a dash swimmer suffering under the hot sun (in conditions cooler than those in which a 25km world title was raced in China in July)

31: Yannick Agnel, the 19-year-old European 400m freestyle champion from France, adds a part-time business school course to his regime ahead of London 2012 to fill the void created by a decision to set studies aside in 2011