I noticed that not too many people are posting much stuff out here on teh swimming boards. Im just wondering is it because swimming ins't a major sport over there in America? Because it is every big here in Australia.

In short, all im doing is yelling out into the vast corners of the internet to see if anyone responds to me... please do. Then we can talk about something interesting.

I think the main reason why Swimming isn't that big in the states is because it is difficult to commercialize swimming. Like many of the other major sports (football, basketball, baseball) they are commercialized a lot and recieve a lot of TV time, they have sponsors and large arenas.

Another reason I see swimming not being as prevelant as other sports is because there are not that many big names. You of course have your 2 or 3 stars, but they are only going to swim 3 or 4 events at most, and during the whole swim meet(lasting a couple of hours), you are only rooting for a player/competitor for about 2-5 minutes, depending on race.

The main reason is probably Americans Fear of Water, Scary:D

You guys may be scared of water, but your number in the world for it... lol

The Australians and the Dutch I'd say! Or is that perhaps because of 'stars' like Ian Thorpe and Pieter van den Hoogenband? I guess it's more fun to watch for 'general sports fans' if someone of their own country competes and wins the big prizes.

I have to say swimming has always been very popular in The Netherlands (where I'm from) as a recreational sport. But sports TV programs are dominated by soccer. Since Pieter van den Hoogenband and Inge de Bruijn started bringing in the gold since Sydney, it has become a lot more popular with the mainstream audience.

I noticed on the web that there are quite a few international fans of Pieter van den Hoogenband and since he's my favourite swimmer too, I set up an English website dedicated to him. I've translated some Dutch articles and interviews and even a few of his columns (he writes for a Dutch newspaper). I'm working on more and am posting daily, so perhaps you would like to check it out and bookmark it:

http://pietervandenhoogenband.blogspot.com.

If you link me on your website (and click once on it to activate it), I automatically link back with a nice javascript thingy.