Men’s 200m freestyle world champion Paul Biedermann is welcomed home by hundreds of residents in the German city of Halle. Biedermann set a new world record in the event as he broke Michael Phelps’ extensive winning streak (source).

For more photos of the event, visit Yahoo! Sports.

Photo via Yahoo! Sports from GERARD JULIEN/AFP/Getty Images

Craig Lord at SwimNews.com has created a medal table for the 2009 FINA World Championship “Suit Wars.” It looks like the most gold medals were won in the Arena X-Glide (14) compared to 9 golds in the Jaked 01. However, the Jaked 01 was used in the most overall medal swims, with 37 total medals vs. 36 medals won in the X-Glide.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the suits themselves won the medals. But this table does show which suits were chosen by the top athletes who made it to the podium.

The one and only Carmen Sandiego knocked over the blueseventy booth in the “Suits for all in the name of a level playing field” zone at World Championships! Not really, but B70 did have $10,000 of their merch stolen – according to a blog post from Dean Jackson, found via the17thman on Twitter.

According to the blog post, FINA had asked all brands to bring plenty of suits so that there would be no shortage, and thus no excuse for the suits causing an uneven playing field. Blueseventy went out of their way to give suits out to anyone who wanted to wear the Nero at World Championships, and had a huge amount of suits on hand in a “secured” storage area.

They just can’t catch a break! Blueseventy leaves Rome with a new ruling that bans their Nero suit from competition, a short timeline to turn out a new product for 2010, and a $10,000 loss of merchandise. I dunno what the theif has in mind for those suits, because in 5 months they’ll be hard pressed to find a buyer – even on the Carmen Sandiego-esque Italian black market that I’m picturing in my head.

Reuters reported that two Djibouti (Jabuuti) national swimmers have been missing since Monday, and failed to show up for heats of the 50 Breast and 100 Free this morning at the FINA World Championships. The brief article, found via Universal Sports, leaves plenty of room for speculation – so let’s speculate!

First of all, what is a Djibouti? Well the Republic of Djibouti is actually a small country in northern Africa.

According to the article: “Italian media reported that several North African athletes disappeared and became illegal immigrants after last month’s Mediterranean Games in Pescara” (source). But why would anyone want to leave Africa? Oh, this might have something to do with it…

And the fact that about a fifth of the population live below the international poverty line, with an income of US$1.25 a day.

Photos from FINA Worlds: Swimming, Day 10 on Universal Sports

In a WR time of 3:59.15 (source) Federica Pellegrini became the first woman to break the 4:00 minute barrier in the Women’s 400m Freestyle.

Joanne Jackson of Great Britain predicted that all three medalists would break the mark during the World Championships, but Jackson clocked a 4:00.60 herself to take the silver medal.

Her prediction from Telegraph.co.uk:

“By the time the race is over, Jackson predicts that all three medallists will have taken the event into new territory by breaching the elusive mark. She just hopes that she and fellow Briton Rebecca Adlington are among them.” (source)

Jackson and Adlington both finished in the medals but only gold medal winner, and new world record-holder, Federica Pellegrini met the predicted time.

Garrett and Chris are back with a new project: SwimPulse.net. Debuting Sunday afternoon, with an announcement from The Screaming Viking!, the site already has interviews and recaps from Roma 09 posted.

Meanwhile, FloSwimming sits quiet during the biggest meet of 2009… not good.

Earlier today, the Spanish synchronized swimming team took silver in the team free event. They did, however, win gold in the unattested swimsuits most resembling an anatomically correct skeleton category.

More photos from Day 8 of the 2009 FINA World Championships available at FINA.org.

> Michael Phelps Behind the Scenes SUBWAY Visit the17thman
> Suit choices of the top 3 competitors in the 10k Open Water Race! SCAQ Blog
> Review of Go Swim’s ‘Freestyle with Jason Lezak’ DVD Rob Aquatics
> David Boudia and Christina Loukas in Rome YouTube: USA Diving
> German diver smacks head on board in FINA World Championships Telegraph.co.uk
> Russia takes sixth synchronized swimming gold in Rome Universal Sports
> A Look Around The Roman Pools Swim Network
> Jo Jackson predicts fall of four-minute freestyle barrier Telegraph.co.uk

This photo, from the 2009 FINA Opening Ceremonies photo gallery on Universal Sports, shows yet another creepy artistic interpretation of sports. Is it the ghost of swimming past? A loose fitting conservative cut maillot with no polyurethane panels!

And here comes USA diver, Chris Colwill, carrying the American flag–wait a minute… where is everybody? Did the swimmers forget to tell the divers that they were planning on skipping the opening ceremonies?

Related: World Championships Flag Bearer: Get A Diver To Do It
Related: Photo: World University Games Opening Ceremony

There was an interesting coincidence in the selection of both the USA and Canadan flag bearers for the FINA World Championships opening ceremonies. Of all the aquatics athletes that could have been chosen, both countries picked divers to carry the flag. For the United States, Olympic diver Chris Colwill will be carrying the flag, while Canadian diver and former World Champion, Alex Despatie, will carry the flag for Canada.

Diving.ca has a whole article about how Alex was picked to carry the flag:

“The selection committee made its assessment based on three areas of emphasis: 50% athletic achievement; 30% leadership in the sport community and 20% on community involvement. The committee included athletes from the various aquatic sports who actually made the final selection.” (source)

Whereas the information for Chris came from a USA Diving Direct E-Newsletter:

“Chris Colwill has been chosen to serve as the flag bearer for the U.S. delegation for all four aquatics sports at the opening ceremonies for the upcoming FINA World Championships in Rome.”