Regional Open Water Competition News

The open water competition season is primarily focussed in the June/August period with the Regional events happening in late June through to mid July. This year London reverted to its own championships for the first time since 2019. It was at a new venue -Merchant Taylors’ School at Watford. The event received the highest ever entry since our first event in 2013. There was a lot of good competition on the day .The  venue was considered by everyone to be excellent but was also a challenge to the organisers as the site needed more volunteers than in previous years’. The organising committee would like to thank all those parents/committee members who volunteered. A special thank must go to Hillingdon and Teddington who supplied the significant majority of the volunteers.

The event was swum over 4 distances ranging from 1k to 5k and had swimmers aged from 11 years old to over 60. The 2k,3K and 5K events were all qualifying events for the Swim England Open Water Nationals. Swimmers qualify for the Nationals by achieving a 1 to 3^rd place in the regional event or by achieving a national pool qualifying time at 800 m or 1500m.

The events all ran very smoothly apart from the 1k which stated the day where the entrants misread the course and swam a bit further than the required distance!  The event was supported by a very experienced group of officials. There is a limited pool of qualified open water officials in the country and many of them travelled significant distances to support the event. On behalf of the Region a special thank has also got to go to these volunteers as without them the championships could  not run.

The races on the day were very competitive across all ages and there were a number of close finishes. The Region put forward a full complement of swimmers to the national event with the majority taking up their place. The full regional results have already been published on the website.

On behalf of the Region a thank you must also go to the organising committee supported by James Warrener, who put in a huge amount of effort to make the event successfully happen.

See the Full Results HERE