Swimming World wants you to feel at home, so we’ve made a little space, moved some furniture and hope you like what you see. It’s the first phase of a new dawn and longer-term development that aims to help you find and always know where to look for the articles and features and themes you’re most interested in.
We’ve set some goals and a process is underway. One aim is to live up to the second word in the title – World, and we trust you’ve noticed the work already underway.
Swimming and aquatics sport in general are home to a vast ocean of people, speeds, talents, paces, interests, skills, roles and topics within topics.
There’s a diverse readership around the world, too, complete with unique reasons to visit Swimming World and a variety of ways of accessing a vast library of content, from news and views to analysis, in-depth features, guidance and inspiration, and the context of a rich history in partnership with the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
We have quantity in abundance but our aim is to bring you quality, insight, fine journalism, truth without fear or favour and insightful reflection of a world of water brimming with skills and thrills, personalities, leaders, pioneers, pathfinders, the fearless and the unsung heroes who provide the foundations and cornerstones of a pantheon second to none in world sport.
Many in aquatic sports are living through hard and challenging times, with more of that to come in the weeks and months ahead. Plans, goals and dreams have been washed away by the wave of coronavirus spreading rapidly around the globe.
If the sporting landscape has become a desert in a matter of weeks, through canceled and postponed events, there is no shortage of grit and determination out there, be it at the elite level or down at the local club finding digital ways to get around social distancing and isolation and keep the body and mind fit for purpose and a time when the rains will return and a new season can begin.
The Swimming World team is one for all seasons. Since Swimming World celebrated Independence Day in the United States last year by welcoming Craig Lord and John Lohn back to the fold as editors to oversee the newsroom, the team has grown and now boasts a fine lineup of correspondents.
Our new home page reflects a little of that change today, with the following sections added to the library:
- Americas: Matthew de George now covers the beat from Canada, through the USA and Central America and down into Latin America.
- Europe: Liz Byrnes is our eyes on the old world of more than 50 nations, with Sabrina Knoll another senior journalist contributing to our efforts
- Oceania: Veteran reporter Ian Hanson surfs around Australia with his laptop in tow and his eye out across the waters to New Zealand and beyond
Not yet there but soon to be a new member of of the team, Karien Jonckheere will be our Africa Correspondent, with other appointments planned beyond the challenges of here and now and with us for a while.
The four new section is “Coronavirus Updates“, for the news we’d rather not be covering but are doing so in a fashion second to none courtesy of the efforts of the whole team, including the versatile duo of Dan D’Addona and Andy Ross, who beyond the action that did unfold in college racing this year just wrote an encyclopaedia of previews for the NCAA women’s and men’s 2020 showdowns but didn’t complain once when it was all called off. They just got down to writing up the impact on the folk affected and the ways in which a resilient community steps up, not down, in the face of the deep end of harsh reality.
More of that to come, along with world-class guidance from mentor Wayne Goldsmith and the best of Water Polo coverage, courtesy of Michael Randazzo, with guest appearances from Bill Cohn. Chandler Brandes, our prolific college-commits scribe, has started to spread her writing wings of late and Taylor Brien is the unsung hero of our editorial team, the keeper of diaries and the devil in the detail of all we do.
Over at Swimming World Magazine the multi-publication operation is run by Editor Bob Ingram and his team of Mike Stott and Joe Johnson, writer David Rieder providing some of the finest features out there on swimmers and swimming.
Lest we forget: pictures and their ability to speak a thousand words. Peter H. Bick and Patrick B. Kraemer prove the point. Let’s hear it, too, for Brandi West who heads up marketing, sparks ideas and provokes thought, and Ashleigh Shay on social media and more.
And last but not least, Steve West, who made this home page happen, and our publisher, Brent Rutemiller, who makes it all possible.
This was to have been an Olympic season in which all the above would have contributed to our Olympic coverage in or on Tokyo. July 2020 it is unlikely to be but we hold out the hope that the Games will indeed go on – just when it’s far more sensible, prudent and, above all, safe for that to happen.
Meantime, there will be much to write about and many things to work towards the goals we’ve set ourselves via the process of bringing you the finest, most insightful and fearless coverage of global swimming and other aquatic sports you will find anywhere in the world.
If you have any comments about the changes to our home pages or suggestions as to what you’d like to see and what you feel we could do better, please let us know by sending a note to editorial@swimmingworld.com.
At this difficult time, the Swimming World Team sends its best wishes for strength, resilience and good fortune to all of you.