(no subject)

[lise_lise]

School holidays start July 5 (until August 17) and Milco is immediately going away with his girlfriend's family for two weeks then. He's already done school-wise, but Nicolai isn't.

We are not going anywhere this summer. There are world championships in Singapore, but Asia and a long flight don't appeal to me.
Also World Aquatics have a schedule that doesn't care for masters, with the Open Water two weeks before Pool -- and they're the same swimmers. When asked, one person with WA replied: "it's not a problem, I know people who go home in between or who travel."
No serious swimmer GOES HOME. Serious swim countries are all too far away. You're left with rich pensionados and tourists incorporating a swim meet into their holidays.
So I didn't want to fund WA. (I also didn't go to the previous edition in Doha, but that was because of their opinion of women.)

I'd rather focus on the next European tournaments in Lublin and Paris.

Comments

[sietske]

Fencing’s previous veterans world championships were in Dubai, there were a lot of “Uhmmmm, NO” definite opinions for that one too.

[lise_lise]

I didn't think I'd be very comfortable to be walking around in swimwear in a place where local females don't even swim competitions --
as evidenced by their list of national records: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Qatari_records_in_swimming

Also, it's an untrustworthy place. You never know what example they'll set of your behaviour. Imagine seeing your male teammate and going for a hug (I have a teammate who hugs) and you get thrown in jail because you're not married. And I certainly don't understand my gay swimming friends who went :-S

I later read on Facebook that a German swimmer said they hadn't really been friendly to women there, but I didn't hear that anywhere else. As it wasn't well-attended, lots of people were focusing on having won medals and they would take anything else for granted.

Due to covid postponements and World Aquatics and European Aquatics no longer coordinating their championships, there were FOUR championships in 12 months or so. Before, it was 2016 Euros, 2017 Worlds, 2018 Euros etc. So you usually medalled well if you went anywhere in 2023/24. And frankly, some people don't put it into context, so they like going to badly-attended stuff.

At one race this season I came 2nd in an event all THREE of us had become European or World champion in in the last year. Quite funny that you can then come 3rd in the LUXEMBOURG championships, of all places.
But Annett had done Fukuoka, Carole Doha and Madeira and I had done Belgrade. (Carole's flight was cancelled to there...) And we all did Luxembourg nationals, hehehe

[sietske]

If you spin it right it can sound like speed skating, where if you finish 5th in the Dutch Championships you’d have a decent shot at a World Cup event :-)

But how did you end up in the Luxembourg nationals of all things, you’d think the nationals would be… well, national.

[lise_lise]

Most national masters championships tend to be Open everywhere. This was a yearly event already called Luxembourg Open until they passported a few expats and actually came to have a few more national swimmers, and started to call it their championships at the same time. (But I'm not sure this even still counts as such. Maybe they're now integrated with the kids for the national titles.)
My opponent is an actual real Luxembourgeoise who may post on Facebook in Letzebuergisch. But basically the members of the clubs there are from every European country you can think of.
I once said to a timekeeper: "Français? Deutsch? English? of ja boeie, Nederlands?"

"MAG OOK!" zei hij. Hadn't expected that ;-)

[sietske]

Ha! Beats that one referee I had in Belgium whose MO did sadly not include saying “point droite” or “pointe gauche” or also using proper hand gestures so I thought I was 2-3 in front when in actuality I was 4-1 behind. Bit of a difference when your matches go up to 5.

(I know French is de rigeur in fencing but there’s a SIGN LANGUAGE. Use it.)

[katharhino]

Oh my goodness, they'd expect people to make two trips to Singapore in two weeks? Sure, sure.