This article, posted by the San Francisco Chronicle, indicates that swimmers will lose access to much of their social media while in China, as the Chinese government blocks access to many Western social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. This has been something that swimmers have inquisitively lamented about over the past few days as they announce final sendoffs from training camps in Singapore, Australia, Japan, and other Pacific-rim training grounds.
But is there a glimmer of hope? While some have already set up accounts on Chinese-approved social media networks, like Sina Weibo, it appears as though some have found a way to reach their fans regardless. The divers were the first to test their mettle in Shanghai, and several (including American David Boudia and 17-year old British icon Tom Daley) have been Tweeting actively before and after their competitions. This seems to be an indication either that these guys are quite technically adept and were able to set up a rogue VPN network on the fly (unlikely), or that there may be WiFi access at the Sports Center that allows open internet to meet participants and officials.
While the organizing committee has obviously set up internet access for members of the media, they’ve given no indication of whether or not these will be restricted the same way that they are elsewhere in China. It does not appear that FINA has pushed for free internet access the way that the IOC did when the Olympics were in Beijing…
…Cesar Cielo has retained American Lawyer Howard Jacobs to represent him in front of the CAS. For those unfamiliar, Jacobs is the lawyer who represented Jessica Hardy in her case. Click the link for a full report…
…Open Water swimming will begin tomorrow (around 9 PM tonight Eastern US time) at China’s Jinshan City Beach. The first race of the meet will be the women’s open water 10km, where the American entries will be Christine Jennings and Eva Fabian. The defending FINA World Champion is Great Britain’s Keri-Anne Payne, and the defending Open Water World Champion from the separate 2010 event is Italian Martina Grimaldi. Aside from medals competitors will be battling for a top-10 finish, as that guarantees a berth in next year’s Olympics in London…
…The unique feature of this race course will be a tight, 90-degree turn only 200 meters into the start of each race, which is something that most competitors and coaches say they’ve never seen before. The beginning of these open water races are usually violent and tumultuous, and this one will be even more so as swimmers battle to get good positioning for the first turn, much as you might see at the beginning of a horse race. This effect will be more pronounced in the women’s races than the men’s, since the women tend to attack their swims much earlier than the men, who sit back and go with the pace until the final few kilometers…
…The weather is pretty average for Shanghai this time of year. Air temperatures will be in the low-to-mid 80’s for the majority of the race. No reports are available for the water temperatures…
…The Chinese continued their utter domination in diving yesterday by taking two more golds: in the women’s 10 meter synchro and in the men’s 1-meter. The Chinese lead the current medal count with all four gold medals in diving. Their silver in the men’s 1-meter means that nobody has defeated a Chinese diver yet at this meet, though that could happen in the men’s 10-meter with Britain’s Daley standing as the defending World Champion…
…The first two finals of women’s synchronized swimming had some nice symmetry to them. The duet technical routine and the solo technical routine both awarded medals in the same order: Russia for gold, China for silver, and Spain for bronze. Each country is only allowed one entry in each of those disciplines. This shows a bit of a shift in the world order in that aquatics discipline. Russia usually dominates (they won 6 of the 7 golds in Rome), but in 2009 it was Spain who commanded most of the silvers (six), with bronze being divided between China, Canada, and Italy. This year, it looks as though China has really made a big push in front of a home crowd and blown past Spain, though Russia is still clearly dominant…
…The Canadian pair of Marie-Pier Boudreau-Gagnon and Elise Marcotte may have found a way to bring more fans to the sport of synchronized swimming. When the pair competes in the Duet free routine (prelims on Tuesday, finals on Friday), they will be rocking to Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” and “Enter Sandman”. While historically, breaking the musical mold has been frowned upon in other choreographed sports like figure skating, the Canadian Press reports that this routine has been very well received by both audiences and judges. The pair is a medal contender, as Boudreau-Gagnon finished 4th in 2009 with a different partner in this event. The Chinese women, meanwhile, imitated “Bond Girls” in prelims of their team routine…
Keri-anne mentioned in one of her tweets that she could access twitter using her mobile via 3G roaming, but not when connected to a wifi network. She’s a committed tweeter but no computer expert and definitely won’t have had the time or focus to set up a VPN or other method to get round the great firewall.
Yes! Damn did Keri-anne have me worried but again showed her world class kick! go girl.
Great tough swim by Gorman.
Very excited about the open water, Keri-anne is in superb shape, she is the fastest female ever over 10K and has the sprint (1.59 200m) if the pace is slow to out-run the others to the line, i hate to say it in a race this unpredictable but Payne will do well to MISS a medal here.
As far as the tweeting goes, I know Boudia is sponsored by Coca-Cola and Chinese sporting goods company Li-Ning, so they are probably trying to make it as easy as possible for the athletes themselves to tweet.