Dan Koeck for msnbc.com
Blind swimmer Tharon Drake, right, seeks the hand of fellow swimmer Lt. Bradley Snyder to congratulate him on winning the 400-meter freestyle event in record time on Thursday at the 2012 U.S. Paralympics Swimming Trials in Bismarck, N.D. Snyder earned a spot on Team USA's swim team for the Paralympics later this summer in London.
London is calling for Lt. Brad Snyder.
The former Navy bomb defuser, who last September lost both eyes in an Afghan explosion, formally gained a roster spot Sunday on the U.S. Paralympic team bound for England, after swimming what he agreed was the race of his life.
“I’m super excited,” said Snyder, 28. “Normally, I’m a little too prideful to admit I am nervous before a race. But I was a little nervous. There was a pretty sizable uncertainly” that he would swim well enough to qualify.
To earn a ticket to London later this summer, Snyder needed to swim at least 41 seconds faster than his previous best in his top event, the 400-meter freestyle. In competitive swimming, where outcomes usually are measured in tenths of seconds, 41 seconds is an eternity.
But Snyder didn’t simply meet his goal. He demolished it, going 54 seconds faster than he ever had since losing his sight. Snyder clocked a 4:35.62 – now the current, world-best time at that distance for fully blind swimmers.
Need more context? That time was just 1.5 seconds behind the mark he posted at that distance while swimming for the Naval Academy seven years ago, when he could see the lane lines, the competition and, most importantly, the wall.
Editor's note: This is the third installment that chronicles Lt. Brad Snyder's efforts to earn a spot on Team USA's roster for the 2012 London Paralympics. Read the first story here and read the second story here.
Lucky No. 12
Still, he had to wait until Sunday morning when the U.S. Paralympic swimming coaches announced the 14 names on the American men’s roster. To hear the news, hundreds of athletes, family members and coaches packed an academic hall at Bismarck State College, host of the meet. Dozens more people couldn’t be seated and waited for news while standing in a nearby hallway. Eleven names already had been read before Snyder finally heard his.
He stood, felt a massive wave of emotion rising in his throat and then walked, led via one arm by his brother, Mitchell, toward most of the rest of the men’s team already gathered at the front of the room.
Lt. Brad Snyder lost his sight in an IED explosion in Afghanistan last September. The Navy officer is now training to represent the U.S. at the London 2012 Paralympics.
“As I was walking him over, I was just staring down at the floor. I didn’t want look at anyone because I thought I was going to cry,” said Mitchell Snyder. “I was mostly thinking how far he’s come since September. I couldn’t have been prouder.”
At the swimming trials, Mitchell served as his brother’s “tapper” – a person assigned to touch a blind swimmer on the head or shoulder with a walking cane to warn him or her that the wall is near and that a flip turn or a finishing kick is needed. No other communication is allowed between the tapper and a swimmer.
“The moment his name was announced everyone erupted and I guess he got a standing ovation,” said Mitchell Snyder, 25. “He couldn’t see it. And I didn’t want to see it because I thought I was going to lose it.”
Snyder joins a rising corps of wounded U.S. servicemen and servicewomen who will again battle for their nation overseas – this time as Paralympians vying for gold medals in track, cycling, archery, wheelchair tennis and an array of other sports. More than 30 active-duty and retired soldiers and sailors are expected to make the 2012 American Paralymic team – double the number that competed for Team USA at the Beijing Paralympic Games four years ago.
Golden favorite
“You can look at it and say, unfortunately, we’re having a lot of guys hurt. But at the same time we’re having a lot of guys hurt who are finding relevancy in going out there and succeeding post-injury,” Brad Snyder said. “We’re finding a way to get past, finding a way to strive for success just the way we were in the military.
“After joining the military, you want to be the best in the world at your job because it means life or death. (After injury) we’re stripped of the ability to do that the way we used to do. But we can still find an avenue through elite competition.”
Lt. Brad Snyder, blinded by an IED explosion in Afghanistan, is now training for the London 2012 Paralympics.
This week, Snyder will return to his intern job at a Baltimore software company. And he will continue training at a Baltimore aquatic center with his coach, Brian Loeffler, in preparation for the London Games. At the 2012 Paralympics, he also will be considered a front runner for a gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle. At the Bismarck trials, Snyder swam that event in 57.75 seconds – now the current, world-best time for blind athletes.
But he’ll never forget, he said, his very first race in Bismarck – the chase that offered Snyder his first solid proof that he could, once again, be the best in the world at something.
With an entry time of 5:29, Snyder wasn’t fully sure he could finish close to the 4:43 mark held by Spaniard Enhamed Enhamed – formerly the holder of the record in the 400-meter freestyle. Among blind swimmers, Enhamed has been a giant for years, collecting four gold medals at the Beijing Paralympics.
Unforgettable performance
Last Thursday morning, amid the preliminary heat for that same event, Mitchell Snyder glanced at the pool clock several times from his tapper position as his brother churned his arms and kicked his feet.
“But I was at the finishing end, so I had to make sure he was going to hit the wall safe and I couldn’t watch the clock when he touched,” Mitchell Snyder said. “Earlier in the race, though, it became abundantly clear during the first hundred meters, and the second hundred and the third hundred that, unless something drastically wrong happened, we had a No. 1 time in the world on our hands.”
“They’re strict in what the tapper can or can’t say,” Brad Snyder added. “So when I finished, I didn’t know what my time was. I can’t look at the scoreboard. And none of the people in front of the (starting) blocks can tell me. But I was fortunate that the announcer of the meet – and only by virtue of the fact that I was the first one to the wall – announced the time, 4:39. I kind of heard it. And I thought, 4:39, wow that’s kind of fast.”
Knowing he had a world-best time already tucked away in the prelim, Snyder said he was able to relax and swim the event’s final race that night much more freely.
But again, after he touched the wall at the finish, he didn’t know how he had fared.
Then somebody – somebody who was sitting behind the blocks – and I don’t even know who it was, whispered to me, “4:35!” I had shaved four more seconds off my time. They weren’t supposed to tell me. But I could definitely hear the excitement in their voice.”
Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.”
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New buyers may lift London art sales to $1 billion - Reuters UK
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) - London's art market is attracting the lion's share of business from an emerging class of super-wealthy collectors from Russia, the Middle East and China, and they are likely to be a big factor in a summer season of sales valued at up to $1 billion (638 million pounds).
Christie's, Sotheby's and smaller rivals like Phillips de Pury hold a three-week series of auctions featuring works by artists as diverse as Rembrandt, Renoir and Gerhard Richter.
Euro zone turmoil and slowing Chinese economic growth are giving investors the jitters, yet the high-end art market has defied gravity on a record-breaking streak.
New York has long been considered the global capital of the auction world -- most recent records have been set there, including the $120 million paid for Edvard Munch's "The Scream" at a Sotheby's sale in May.
London, a more natural fit for Russian tycoons who have homes in the city and Middle Eastern buyers just a mid-haul flight away, may be closing that gap.
Sotheby's has calculated that, while the number of lots sold to buyers from "new" markets has risen in both cities so far this year, the increase has been far more marked in London (33 percent) than New York (six percent).
"Particularly the Russians feel very comfortable bidding in the London sales as many of them have second homes and are very active here," said Helena Newman, chairman of Sotheby's impressionist and modern art department in Europe.
"I think that because of our geographic situation, we are the gateway to the East ... Central Asia, the Middle East and the East," she told Reuters at the company's London headquarters where star lots from the upcoming sales were on display.
"We definitely see that in the sales of recent years. It is a growing trend."
BILLION-DOLLAR BONANZA?
Beyond bragging rights, auctioneers are not overly concerned with who buys what where. Key lots for sale in London come from the United States, for example, and the market overall has become more globalised.
One of the prize lots of the season is English artist John Constable's "The Lock", being offered by Christie's for 20-25 million pounds and the only one of a series of six important landscapes by the painter to be in private hands.
It goes under the hammer on July 3 and should eclipse the 10.8 million pounds raised when it was sold in 1990 - a British painting record it held for 16 years.
On the same night, Rembrandt's "A Man in a Gorget and Cap" is on course to raise 8-12 million pounds.
On Wednesday, a Renoir nude is set to fetch 12-18 million pounds and the next week the same auctioneer offers Yves Klein's "Le Rose du Bleu", estimated at 17-20 million pounds and Francis Bacon's "Study For Self-Portrait" (1964) (15-20 million).
Christie's, the world's largest auction house, expects to raise at least 310 million pounds from its sales of impressionist, modern, contemporary art as well as those of British paintings and Old Masters.
The upper estimate is closer to 500 million pounds, and combined with Sotheby's low target of 210 million pounds, a billion-dollar art bonanza looks within reach.
"The four week summer season of major international auctions at Christie's ... is set to become one of the richest and most valuable series of auctions in company history," said Jussi Pylkkanen, head of Christie's Europe.
MIRO RECORD IN SIGHT
At Sotheby's, the top work of the season could be Joan Miro's "Peinture (Etoile Bleue), valued at 15-20 million pounds and in sight of the artist record set this year of 16.8 million.
Its appearance so soon after the February record is no coincidence -- auction houses tailor sales to reflect the latest tastes, and the Miro, along with works by Henry Moore and Surrealist Paul Delvaux, all follow recent auction highs.
The prominence of large, colourful, figurative works at Sotheby's, including Kees van Dongen's "Lailla", Marc Chagall's "L'Arbre de Jesse" and Delvaux's "Deux Femmes couchees", also reflects emerging market tastes.
Soaring prices for coveted works of art at a time of global economic uncertainty have long prompted warnings of a sharp correction and even collapse, but time and again in the last three years the market has defied the gloomiest predictions.
There has been weakening in Chinese demand and tastes can be fickle, but the very best works of art have generally risen in value since a sharp but brief drop in auction turnover in 2009.
The contraction was as much a reflection of sellers backing away as of falling demand, experts say, and auction houses believe they are back in a "virtuous cycle" of rising prices in turn attracting the very best works on to the market.
Institutional acquisitions have also played a key role in the recovery, with Qatar emerging as one of the biggest buyers of art in recent years as it fills a growing network of museums.
Widespread reports said the Gulf state paid $250 million for Paul Cezanne's "The Card Players" in a private deal, believed to be the highest price ever paid for a work of art. (Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)
Facebook's Explore London 2012: Get Social With The Summer Games - PC Advisor
Facebook is getting into the Olympic spirit with Explore London 2012 on Facebook, a portal where you can find and get Facebook updates from your favorite athletes, national teams, and individual sports during the Olympic Games in London.
Facebook says it intends to add national Olympics broadcasters such as NBC and Olympic sponsors to the London 2012 portal in the coming weeks.
The Facebook portal is the first of several efforts from the International Olympics Committee to get social during London 2012. The IOC also plans to launch London 2012-themed pages on Twitter, Tumblr, and Google+, as well as a partnership with Foursquare.
How To Like London 2012
To get Olympic updates on Facebook, all you have to do is “like” the pages for your favorite athletes, sports, or national teams via the Explore London 2012 portal. Then updates from that person's or sport's page, including personal status updates, medal standings, and photos, are pushed to your news feed. It's a simple way to keep up with personal updates from athletes such as swimmer Ryan Lochte or all the latest news from Team USA.
Explore London 2012
Facebook's London 2012 portal is well organized with a cover photo at the top, and then two profile photos for the Olympic Games and London 2012. Below that is a section of highlighted Olympic athletes, including LeBron James, swimmers Dara Torres and Michael Phelps, beach volleyball player Misty May-Treanor, and U.K. soccer star David Beckham. The site features about 200 of the several thousands of Olympic athletes competing in the games.
Below the athletes section are links to the Olympic national teams, and then to specific Olympic sports such as boxing, gymnastics, tennis, triathlon, and volleyball. Thirty-six sports are represented at London 2012, but the portal currently has links to 25.
Each Olympic sport is linked to the page for that sport's official international body. For example, liking aquatics will give you Facebook updates from Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA), the world governing body for swimming. Liking Tennis means you'll get updates from the International Tennis Federation (ITF).
A Facebook spokesperson says the company will add more sports and athlete pages to its portal before the Games begin.
Effective Use of London 2012
Facebook's portal is a handy way to find your favorite parts of the Olympics, but you might want to check out each individual page before liking to make sure you'll get updates during the games.
In my perusal of some of the top athletes' pages, most are maintaining their official pages with regular updates. But some weren't particularly active. That may change once the Olympics kicks into gear, but just be aware that some pages may not be as active as you'd like.
The Summer Olympic Games begin Friday, July 27 in London.
Connect with Ian Paul (@ianpaul) on Twitter and Google+, and with Today@PCWorld on Twitter for the latest tech news and analysis.
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