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Merry Christmas To All Our Readers

Dec 22, 2012

The team at SwimNews wishes you all a merry and peaceful Christmas and a Happy New Year. For many of us, this is a time of happiness, hope, a moment to reflect, live in the moment  and look forward to what follows.

'Tis the season to be jolly, goes the carol, though the festive season reminds us too of those who mourn, those who hunger, those who go in need, of the lonely and the lost (in both senses of that word).

SwimNews lost its captain this year: Nick Thierry's passing not only left us deeply saddened but for a moment rudderless too. Our founder, the man who kept the score for world swimming for 40 years is gone. He will never be forgotten. In 2013, we will honour his wishes and his work and ensure that his legacy lives on.

Of late, a note from a critic who wrote "don't worry, nobody reads that stuff". How Nick, who cherished the words "I guess the truth hurts sometimes", would have laughed. Before he fell ill, he had a chance to see just how popular his rankings and our work online at swimnews.com had become under his guidance: we had almost 3 million visits in the two months stemming the Olympic Games, with more than 16 million hits registered. That's a pretty big nobody tuning into what has always been and remains a small operation, one with scant resources.

Thank you to all of you who come by each day to see what we post. We will take a break for a few days now before posting our review of 2012 before the year is out. In 2013, we will develop a new platform to take Nick's work into the future, keeping in mind his sage words: "I worry about the tendency of humans to make things ever more complicated rather than simpler".

We wish you a peaceful holiday season.