Courtesy of Päivi Pälvimäki, The Outdoor Association of Finland – Suomen Latu, Peurunka, Laukaa, Finland. Päivi Pälvimäki is the Winter Swimming Coordinator for The Outdoor Association of Finland – Suomen Latu. She describes an old winter swimming event in Peurunka, Laukaa, Finland. The inaugural Winter Swimming European Championships will be held between March 1st – […]

Courtesy of WOWSA, Las Vegas, Nevada. 18-year-old Erica Sullivan of the Sandpipers of Nevada will focus on training for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and will wait for two years to enroll at the University of Southern California until after the next Olympics. Her college coaches, Dave Salo and Catherine Vogt, are supportive of her decision.

Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California. The Sakurajima Kinko-Bay Open Water Swimming Championships (shown on left) has seen up to 242 four-person teams start on Sakurajima volcano and finish in Kagoshima in southern Japan. Many open water swimming competitions are held near volcanoes, active, dormant and extinct. Some of the more well-known volcano swims around

Courtesy of Jim Ritterhoff, FORCE BLUE, Florida. Jim Ritterhoff, co-founder and Executive Director of FORCE BLUE, reported the following activities and achievements of his innovative program that he started with Rudy Reyes. FORCE BLUE give military veterans a chance to learn about and explore coral reefs, one of the most critically endangered ecosystems on the

Photo courtesy of Ron Modra for Sports Illustrated Magazine, Manhattan Island. Julie Ridge authored Take It to the Limit: Endurance: How to Build It into Everything You Do in 1985. The Honor Swimmer in the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame certainly took her talents to the limit in the open water. Over the course

Photo of Henri Kaarma, a recent honoree of the Ice Swimming Hall of Fame from Estonia, at the 2013 Tyumen Open Water Swimming Cup in Tyumen, Siberia by Nuala Moore. Dashing through the waterWith gel packs as our fodderIn a four-person drafting packWe swim fast with no slack O’er the waves we goPositioning, pacing with

Courtesy of WOWSA, Estonia. Mild-mannered Estonian banker Henri Kaarma, who was recently honored by the Ice Swimming Hall of Fame, appeared on an Estonian television show on April 21st 2011 that features the most extreme feats by Estonians. Back in 2011, the humble extreme athlete, one of the fastest ice swimmers in the world, swam