Gotta love the Olympic sponsors ramping it up so far this year.

Well if you are a swimmer and have been waiting impatiently for training tips from Mikey P. and Nat C., your prayers have been answered thanks to AT&T. After all, this may be the all-importactor to push you over the edge and help you achieve your goals! (Sometimes we’re rather optimistic)

If you navigate on over to the AT&T Blue Room, you can browse training tips from a selection of Olympic athletes including gymnast Nastia Liukin, Beach Volleyball stars Kerri Walsh & Misty May-Treanor, and track & field’s Jeremy Wariner.

I’m a little confused, though. Is this just an online thing? Or is AT&T allowing users to sign up and get these tips delivered to their phones? Because that would be a whole lot cooler, provided your phone is video-capable. Kind of like when NIKE let fans sign up for those automated wake-up calls from their athletes. Who wouldn’t want ‘Kaitlin‘ to call and wake them up every morning?

Our thoughts exactly!

This thing is alllllll over the news here in C-BUS.

The Upper Arlington High School Boys swimming coach has just been arrested and charged with rape of a 15 year old female student back in 1996 and 1997.

Police aren’t sure why the victim waited until now to come forward, but suspect there may be more victims. This isn’t exactly the kind of story I like reading with regards to those within the swimming community, but I do tend to write about swim-related goings-on in my area. Gotta take the good with the bad.

A little background on UA: Upper Arlington is located slighty northwest of Columbus and just minutes from my house. I cut through UA in order to get to McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion at Ohio State. It’s one of the more affluent area suburbs, and the girls high school team, coached by Dan Peterkoski just won the Div. 1 State Championship for the 4th straight year.

Sorry. I couldn’t help myself. You know how it is.

I spotted Mr. Doyle on the pool deck timing during Women’s Big Tens

If you don’t get the reference in the title, please go outside and play in traffic. You don’t deserve to be on the internet.

Someone cue the Madonna track right now!

There has been much talk around the blogosphere about Olympians, from other countries, being urged by not to speak out against any of China’s political or social issues.

The British Olympic Association want to require athletes sign a contract stating that they will not speak ill of the Olympic host country.

In the aftermath of that decision, the Australian Olympic Committee has announced that it will allow their athletes to speak their minds on whatever issues they wish to speak about. The only thing they cannot do is hate on any of their competitors.

New Zealanders have followed suit.

The United States Olympic Committee has followed in the footsteps of the Aussies and Kiwis (Yes, I had to use that). The USOC is just asking athletes to make sure they adhere to the present set of Olympic rules.

Due to the fallout from various reports of the BOC’s plans for the athlete agreement, changes may be made to the contract.

In addition to all the freedom of speech rumblings going on around the world, the IOC has decided to make it crystal clear what athletes can and cannot do should they choose to blog from Beijing. Apparently they weren’t allowed to before, but blogs weren’t nearly as popular back then as they are now.

So here are the rules:
1. Athletes can’t be paid to write blogs. (Good, ‘cuz I can’t afford to pay anyone anyway )
2. Athletes can’t be journalists (I think they’ll be too busy to take up a 2nd job)
3. No pictures can be posted in the blogs (Fun ruiners!)

I was looking forward to all of the pictures that would have turned up in said blogs, but that’s ok. There’s always Facebook!

We knew they would eventually wise up.

So Olympic Trials ticketing started with all-session only passes being offered. The Swim Aids were outraged.

Then months later, mini packages (of the 3 day variety) were announced to the public. The Swim Aids approved.

Now, USA Swimming has announced that single-day tickets are up for sale. The Swim Aids rejoice!

We don’t know if this was their plan all along. We don’t want to give the higher-ups that much credit. We’d like to think that the additional options for tickets came about because it was the right thing to do and not as the last part of a ploy to get more people to initially buy all-session passes.

At the Women’s Big Ten Champs tonight, I wasn’t expecting to see the wonderful Peter Bick. So imagine my surprise to see him — knee pads and all — strolling around the pool deck of the McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion! I’ll have to flag him down tomorrow or Saturday to catch up!

P.S. I think this means that we may see Mr. Bick covering the men’s meet next week at his alma mater. *crosses fingers*

We’ve made it no secret that Megan Romano is our girl. We love her to death, not just because she is so ghetto, but also because she just kicks major ass!

We met Megan’s mama, Rhonda, many moons ago at the 2005 CP Summer Nationals. That’s when we decided that I’d create and maintain her official website. I hadn’t heard from Rhonda in a few months, but I got quite the spirited phone call today from her.

The reason being that Megan was currently appearing on the front page of the Yahoo! website. Big time, baby!

We’ve been rooting for Meg for years and don’t see that changing any time soon! Get to know Meg’s story a little better by reading the spotlight here.