The Swim Champions’ Fitter & Faster Tour is currently on the road, making stops at local clubs in your state to host age group clinics. In the Cincinnati Area, Christine Magnuson, Mark Gangloff, Nick Thoman, and Peter Vanderkaay will be at Keating Natatorium on October 24th.

Tickets are only $75 for the 3 hour clinic, and can be purchased from www.SwimChampions.com.

Even if you can’t make it to an event, there are a lot of candid photos of your favorite swimming stars on the Swim Champions fan page on Facebook.

Some of your favorite Swimming Stars will be on tour following the FINA World Championships to host swim clinics to provide a chance to meet and interact with Olympians. According to Swimming World Magazine, the line-up includes: Matt Grevers, Peter Vanderkaay, Megan Jendrick, Mark Gangloff, Christine Magnuson, Ben Wildman-Tobriner, Ous Mellouli and Lacey Nymeyer.

The tour is being organized and marketed by Arluck Promotions, in association with the USA Swimming Foundation, with a nod to the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid.

David Arluck, president of Arluck Promotions, was quoted in the Swimming World article:

“We want to remind kids why they love to swim,” said David Arluck, President of Arluck Promotions, a Miami Beach based sports marketing firm putting on the event. “It’s not every day you get a chance to meet an Olympian. To get the chance to swim and engage with multiple Olympic athletes makes it a truly unique experience that will significantly impact these kids and their passion for the sport.”

Tour dates and locations can be found at SwimChampions.com

It feels like we haven’t had a swimming Grand Prix event in months! … oh right, it’s been since the Austin Grand Prix back in the first week of March. Well thank goodness for the Charlotte UltraSwim! If there was ever a meet to shake me out of the no-swim-meet blues, this is surely it.

The meet website can be found here, and you can also check out a copy of the preliminary psych sheet. Are you ready for a parade of superstars? The UltraSwim meet site boasts a scrolling list of the 120+ Olympians who have competed at this meete in the past. And, according to the psych sheet, there will be no shortage of star-power this year.

Let’s do some name dropping: Katie Hoff, Peter Vanderkaay, Mary DeScenza, Ryan Lochte, Eric Shanteau, Mark Gangloff, Davis Tarwater, Aaron Peirsol, Elizabeth Beisel, Amanda Weir, Cullen Jones, Matt Patton, … oh and some guy called Michael Phelps who I hear is pretty good.

This will be the first meet for both Jones and Phelps since the Beijing Olympics, and, as reported by Swimming World Magazine, the event will be broadcast LIVE on the Universal Sports television network and webcast LIVE on Swimnetwork.com.

The U.S. National Swim Team participated in Navy SEAL training last week. Why? I don’t know. For fun, for a good workout, for mental toughness.

After a team meeting Tuesday night, the entire national team drove to the Navy base in Coronado, CA for one day of intense military training. The Navy SEALs Blog by US Navy SEAL Store(.com) said that “it was a day when the best trained with the best.” Well the Navy SEALs definitely train in the water, but I’m not sure how comfortable our swimmers fared on land, and in the air–dangling from a huge suspended cargo net!

Garrett Weber-Gale’s account of the adventure on his blog, Food & Water, is very entertaining. You can tell he has an intense “bring it on” personality. Here’s an excerpt from his blog post:

I woke up Wednesday morning with a big smile on my face again. As I ate breakfast most people looked tired, nervous, annoyed that we had to do this…no way baby…I was pumped! As we pulled up near the Navy base I saw this huge cargo net in the air that was draped between two huge logs. I thought to myself, “Uh oh…I hope I don’t have to climb that…I’m terrified of heights.” Oh yeah, heck yeah we climbed that thing.

SwimNetwork.com has a great photo album of the experience, with large images of your swimming all-stars drudging through an obstacle course. Here are a couple images from the gallery.

True story, Garrett looks as intense in this picture as he sounds in his blog post. Here is something interesting I found on Google Maps, on Coronado’s beach there is what looks like a large pile of rocks that spell out “Coronado.” I also grabbed this group photo from Garrett’s blog. All in all it sounds like a great experience for our USA National Swim Team.

It looks like SwimStars.org beat me to it, but the psych sheet for the Austin Grand Prix is now online for your viewing pleasure. From SwimStars.org:

An earlier release already confirmed the participation of Aaron Peirsol, Katie Hoff, and Peter Vanderkaay. With the release of the psych sheet, it has also been revealed that Swim Star Davis Tarwater will return to competition.

So cool, check out host Longhorn Aquatics meet website here for the latest information.

Photo source: Open Air Cinema Blog