Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California. The WOWSA Awards includes the categories of the World Open Water Swimming Man of the Year, World Open Water Swimming Woman of the Year, the World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year, and the World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year. The WOWSA Awards winners are selected […]

Courtesy of WOWSA, English Channel. Karina Yazmin Almanza Hernandez is an accountant by profession in Mexico City, a PADI open water diver instructor, and an open water swimmer with a cause. “In 2017 I started my swimming project to obtain the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming as a personnel objective. But then early last

Courtesy of Alton Motobu, Waikiki Beach, Hawaii. Phoebe Hines, an Australian who swims for the University of Hawaii, joined an illustrious list of women who were the first overall finishers in the Double Roughwater Swim in Honolulu, Hawaii: Kailu Chun (1981 and 1982), Kari Lydersen (1995), Cherelle Osteringer (2014) and Haley Chasin (2017). Hines finished

Courtesy of Swimming World Magazine. Swimming World Magazine named Olympic 10K marathon swimming gold medalist Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands as its Swimming World Female Open Water Swimmer of the Year. It was the 25-year-old’s third Swimming World Female Open Water Swimmer of the Year award. She has been similarly honored in 2014 and

Courtesy of Oscar Rubio, Mallorca, Spain. After over 2,000 swimmers competed in seven races around the globe, the Open Water World Tour 2018, co-founder Oscar Rubio [shown above in the middle] announced that the winners of the Tour – Andrea Fos Corberá and Xabier Gordoa Aspiazu – who were rewarded with an invitation to the

Courtesy of WOWSA, Murmansk, Russia. Russian winter swimmer Nadezhda Dudina is from Ufa, Bashkortostan and is one of the fastest septuagenarian open water swimmers in the world. She is definitely the world’s fastest winter swimmer among those older than 70 years. She won the 2017 – 2018 International Winter Swimming Association World Cup circuit in

Courtesy of Mark Johnston, Flathead Lake Open Water Swimmers, Montana. Mark Johnston of the Flathead Lake Open Water Swimmers in Montana is working together with Simon Griffiths, the founder and publisher of Outdoor Swimmer Magazine to increase the North American content and number of event listings. He explains, “Outdoor Swimmer is on a mission to

Courtesy of the New York Times, Easter Island, Chile. Cristian Vergara attempted a 38-mile (61 km) circumnavigation swim around Eastern Island in November 2016 that ended in 26 hours 52 minutes. The famed Chilean swimmer called his attempt Circunavegación de natación de Isla de Pascua – Easter Island, Kau Hakateka 2016 Rapa Nui. Vergara pioneered