A post on the Harvard Men's Swimming and Diving Annals, an online clearinghouse of information related to swimming at Harvard, backs up the view that Blumenthal was, in fact, a Harvard swimmer.
A story in Tuesday's New York Times about the Democratic candidate's misrepresentation of his military record also said that he was incorrectly identified as being captain of the swim team at Harvard.
But, the Times wrote, ""records at the college show that he was never on the team."
"We beg to differ,'' Paul Horvath, the author of the post, states. "Indeed, we informed the Times in an e-mail message the night the article appeared on its website that this statement was sufficiently problematic to warrant a correction - to no avail.''
Times spokeswoman Diane C. McNulty said in an email to the Courant last night that there is no record of Blumenthal being on the team -- "never getting a varsity letter, never being captain.''
But, writes, Horvath, "note the carefully crafted grammar here, equating never 'being on the team' with 'never getting a varsity letter.'
"A lot of terrific 18-year-old swimmers, some of whom set national freshman records while barred under NCAA rules from competing on the varsity, might be distressed to learn that they were 'never on the team.'''