Every year, the offerings of the Marathon Swimmers Federation continue to add value, knowledge, and excitement to the sport of open water swimming.
LongSwims Database
Built upon the creativity and curiosity of founder Evan Morrison, the LongSwims Database has become an invaluable, objective, comprehensive tool that is the go-to database of verified marathon swims around the open water world. The LongSwimsDB is used by individual swimmers and the media around the world to compare and confirm swims in lakes, rivers, seas, and oceans.
The LongSwimsDB currently includes 489 established marathon swim events and numerous independent solo routes (see here) as well as Swimmer Profiles where over 91,000 swims by over 33,000 athletes from 142 countries are listed, ranging from 1895 to the present (see here).
His Records & Lists section is especially intriguing. Steven Munatones says, “All this information at your fingertips is an extremely valuable and motivational resource tool. You can look up anyone and see what they have done throughout their careers. You can learn about new swims and swims performed from long, long ago. When I was a kid, I loved reading the Guinness World Record book. I was fascinated by the physical feats and scale of humanity: the tallest, the shortest and everyone in between.
Evan has compiled something more comprehensive and more expansive than the Guinness World Records. He not only has compiled the fastest, longest, slowest swims, but also the swimmers who pioneered routes in and across many different open bodies of water – and included everyone else. The scale of what he has single handedly built is incredible.“
- Longest Swims – World Solo Distance Records
- Longest Swims by duration – 24 hours and longer
- Course Records – Fastest swims of the world’s major routes
- First Swims – Pioneers of the world’s major routes
- Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming
- Oceans Seven
- California Triple Crown
- Toughest Thirteen
- New Zealand Triple Crown
- Stillwater Eight
- Australian Triple Crown
- Australian Grand Slam
- UK 3 Channel Challenge
- Triple Crown of Lake Monster Swims
- International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame
- Progression of Major Course Records
- Basic Descriptive Stats
- Triple Crown Stats – fastest, slowest, shortest, longest, youngest, oldest
- Women’s Participation
- Ten-Year Club
- Most Swims/Crossings by An Individual
The database also includes insights about the sport of marathon swimming through data analyses. Munatones continues, “In the 1960’s, I used to flip through the Guinness World Records book and being amazed by the documented human achievement. I was able to learn a lot. Now I can figuratively do the same online with Evan’s massive piece of work. It presents a geographic lesson of the world’s waterways. It presents a historical documentation of the changing demographics and the speed of swimmers around the world. The reviews of race organizers, pilots, and associations help people make decisions where to go and who to go to.
For example, Evan documented and shows that swimmers like Irene van der Laan of the Netherlands and Michael Read of Great Britain have both completed documented marathon swims of at least 10 km over a 42-year span. That kind of nerdy statistic is fascinating and motivational for fans and historians of the sport.“
Documented Swims
For those who are new to the sport – as swimmers, friends, coaches, or support crew members – or who want to attempt an unprecedented marathon swim, MSF Documented Swims is the go-to solo swim ratification service.
Munatones describes the foundation of knowledge that has enabled Morrison and a team at Marathon Swimmers Federation to create these tools, “Evan is a marathon swimmer himself. He has done channel crossings and served as a support crew member and crew chief, spending hours and hours (and sometimes days and days) on marathon swims. He has served as a volunteer administration of a channel swimming association. All these experiences are invaluable and cannot be replicated by someone who has not been a swimmer or spent hours on an escort boat or diving into the nitty-gritty of planning the logistics of a new swim, considering all the elements like wind, currents, tides, and water and weather conditions. Based on his experiences and knowledge, he can judge what is necessary and what needs to be documented.
Others may pretend to be the ultimate arbiter of marathon swims, but Evan’s experience and judgment cannot be questioned or replicated without putting in decades of hard work and selfless dedication.”
Morrison explains the background how this tool was developed. “We have a rotating team of 10-15 individuals who review the swims that are submitted.
Back in 2014, I observed the Farallon Island swim of Craig Lenning. My report on his swim subsequently became the template that people use to compile documentation to submit to MSF. The basic idea was to enhance the traditional observer log with photos and video and GPS data and some narrative content, to provide a comprehensive account of how the swim occurred.
For the first few years, I didn’t think of it as a ratification service at all. I wanted to encourage people to document their swims and share them with the world. I loved learning about swims all over the world via their documentation and details. As far as I was concerned, if a swimmer and observer compiled documentation similar to what I did for Craig’s swim, then to me, that was sufficient proof they did the swim. No formal ratification was necessary. For these first few years, I happily did it all for free – compiling people’s documentation and publishing it to the MSF website.
As the years went on, people began to expect more and wanted something more like a ratification to formally recognize their accomplishment. The number of swims being submitted increased exponentially, especially during and after the pandemic, and it became a lot more work – too much for me to do on my own. So that’s how we ended up where we are today.”
Newest Innovation
His newest innovation is the track.rs for English Channel crossing. This tracking app captures the live wind and water temperature data from the Sandettie lightship – see https://track.rs/ec.
The weather add-on is available only on English Channel crossings – see image above.
But the general tracking app is also in use for Infinity Channel Swimming-piloted North Channel crossings – see track.rs/infinity
It is also available for New York Open Water Manhattan Island circumnavigation swims and other New York marathon swims – see track.rs/nyow.
Lynn Kubasek, a marathon swimmer who passed away in 2019 and worked alongside Morrison for years on dozens of solo crossings, once said the marathon swimming mover and shaker, “Evan is amazing. He has brought marathon swimming out of mysterious aquatic shadows by creating tools and resources to benefit and enlighten swimmers and supporters. The track.rs application is my favorite. The world of marathon swimming is an exciting and better place thanks to his efforts.”
Morrison explains his work, “I collect swim results data with a constantly evolving combination of automated and ad-hoc Python scripts, string matching algorithms, optical character recognition software, and occasionally brute-force manual data entry.“
That explanation is within the wheelhouse of the Santa Barbara native who graduated from Princeton and Stanford Universities and later worked at Google while serving as the president of the Santa Barbara Channel Swimming Association and as a selector for the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame. His record-setting swim across the Santa Barbara Channel from Santa Cruz Island was featured in the documentary film DRIVEN. He has also completed solo swims of the Catalina Channel, Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, Sandy Hook to Manhattan, Tampa Bay Marathon Swim, and the Maui Channel.
track.rs brings the global swimming community literally and figuratively closer to marathon swims and channel crossings as swimmers ply the waves around the globe in real time. It is a app that ultimates ties swimmers closer together by utilizing various technologies under one interface.
Now with the new weather add-on for English Channel crossings, Morrison’s innovations continue.
To the benefit of all.
Like 18-year-old Californian high school student Tyler Sutton who crossed the English Channel in 13 hours 15 minutes on August 14th.
© 2024 Daily News of Open Water Swimming
“to educate, enthuse, and entertain all those who venture beyond the shoreline“
A World Open Water Swimming Federation project.