Courtesy of Oscar Rubio, Open Water World Tour. Spetses is an affluent island in Greece where the Spetses Mini Marathon was organized by Dr. Marina-Lida Coutarelli. Spetses was the last stage of the Open Water World Tour 2018: a series of swims of 150 meters for children to 5 km as well as running and […]

Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California. Centuries before pool swimming became the rage in 20th century, mankind competed in open water swims. Emperor Go-Yozei, the 107th Emperor of Japan who reigned from 1586 to 1611, organized the first national open water swimming organization in 1603. Prior to that, the Emperor declared that school children in

Courtesy of Lewis Pugh, South Sandwich Islands, Antarctica. UN Patron of the Oceans Lewis Pugh has exchanged his swimsuit for a suit after completing The Long Swim, his 49-day, 560 km stage swim along the English Channel from Land’s End in Cornwall to Dover in Kent. Today, he met with the UK Foreign Secretary to

Just prior to crossing the Tsugaru Channel in northern Japan, Stephen Redmond passed up all the seafood and seaweed that he was offered by his Japanese hosts. Redmond later became the first person to complete the Oceans Seven, prefering to exist on mostly white bread and politely refusing all the marine algae that the local

Courtesy of Mary Pye, Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation. While open water swimming continues to become more and more popular in contemporary times, swimming in oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and bays has been around for a long, long time – not for competition, but more for fishing, navigation and enjoyment purposes. One example