WOWSA Awards – World Open Water Swimming Performance Of The Year
Sponsored by KAATSU, Huntington Beach, California.
The WOWSA Awards are sponsored by the World Open Water Swimming Association and serve as an annual public recognition of the world’s finest open water swimmers and products or services in four categories via a global online poll. The categories include:
* World Open Water Swimming Man of the Year
* World Open Water Swimming Woman of the Year
* World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year
* World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year
Over the history of the WOWSA Awards, the following individuals were selected in the Performance of the Year category:
2009 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year: Andrew Smilley of the Cayman Islands for his performance at the RCP Tiburon Mile in San Francisco Bay
2010 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year: Ventura Deep Six of the USA for its 325 km relay in 101 hours 39 minutes along the California coast
2011 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year: Nejib Belhedi/a> of Tunisia for his coastal 1400K Swim Across Tunisia/a>
2012 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year: Juan Ignacio Martínez Fernández-Villamil of Spain for organizing the Descenso a Nado de la Ría de Navia for decades
2013 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year: Bering Strait Swim, an international relay with 121 participants (swimmers + officials + crew) between Russia and Alaska
2014 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year: Diomede Islands Swim, a 5.6 km tandem swim by Alexandr Brylin and Grigorii Prokopchuk of Russia between the USA and Russia
2015 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year: Strait of Messina record-breaking crossing by Andrea Fazio of Italy
2016 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year: Sarah Thomas of the USA for her 128.7 km crossing of Lake Powell in Utah in 56 hours 5 minutes 26 seconds
2017 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year: Margarita Llorens Bagur of Spain for her 37-hour 73 km solo attempt between Ibiza and Javea in Islas Baleares
2018 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year: Ross Edgley of the UK for his 157-day Great British Swim around Great Britain
2019 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year: Roman Karkachev, Timur Falomkin, Andrey Zamyslov, and Anton Kutuev for their 25 km Gulf Of Finland Relay
The 2019 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year by Karkachev, Falomkin, Zamyslov, and Kutuev is typical of the purposed of the WOWSA Awards:
The nominees for the World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year are selected among an heroic and impressive group of individuals with exceptionally inspirational exploits, histories and lifestyles and who specialize in open water swimming. The WOWSA Awards are not necessarily for the fastest swimmers, but are specifically meant to honor the men and women who:
* best embody the spirit of open water swimming
* possess the sense of adventure, tenacity and perseverance that open water swimmers are known for
* have most positively influenced the world of open water swimming
To nominate a worthy candidate for the 2019 World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year, send an explanatory email to WOWSA Awards Nominations here.
For more information on the WOWSA Awards, visit here.
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