…Georgia Tech is looking for a new assistant after Robert Pinter left the program to coach a club team in Iowa. Pinter has an incredible story from his swimming days, where he defected from the Romanian army to Hungary in the 1980’s, and then applied to Wisconsin – where he worked his way to the 1992 Olympics and was ranked 7th in the world at year’s end. He has other assistant coaching gigs at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin (his alma mater) on his resume as well. Pinter was with the Yellow Jackets for less than a year…
…Swedish swimming’s elite have started a petition to put Simon Sjodin onto the Swedish Olympic Team in the 200 IM. The 26-year old is having the best season of his career, and swam a 1:59.44 in his primary event at the European Championships to clear the FINA ‘A’ time and finish 5th overall, but Sweden still didn’t name him to their Olympic lineup. He’s currently ranked 22nd in the world in 2012, and is the Swedish National Record holder. Click here to sign the petition to support his Olympic bid…
…Brazilian website uol.com is reporting that breaststroker Felipe Franca de Silva, now off of his long-rumored “hamburger diet,” has dropped 8kg (roughly 18 pounds) in the last year since winning gold in the 50 breaststroke at the World Championships. We already saw the results of that at Maria Lenk, where he swam a lifetime best of 59.6 that ranks him 3rd in the world. The transformation appears to be even more drastic now, based on the before-and-after pictrues seen here. Though there’s no 50 at the Olympics, the effect of the weight loss on his endurance to get to that 100 should be even more drastic. He failed to even survive the semi-finals at last year’s World Championships…