Open water swimming continues to explode. At the shorter end of the open water swimming ecosystem, growth continues at faster than one new open water swim per day.

At the longer end of the scale, below is an example of the growth. The numbers below indicate the number of successful swims done in the Catalina Channel on an annual basis.

In the 1960s, there were 0 successful crossings.
In the 1970s, there were 23 successful crossings.
In the 1980s, there were 32 successful crossings.
In the 1990s, there were 33 successful crossings.
In the first decade of the 21st century, there were 112 successful crossings.

But if the data is analyzed even more, there were 103 successful crossings since the sport was accepted into the Olympics (in 2005) – or 52% of all crossings in the last 6 years or since the channel was first crossed in 1927. That can be defined as explosive growth in anyone’s book. And based on growth around the world in marathon swims, the Catalina Channel is not the exception.

1960 – 0 successes
1961 – 0
1962 – 0
1963 – 0
1964 – 0
1965 – 0
1966 – 0
1967 – 0
1968 – 0
1969 – 0
1970 – 0
1971 – 4
1972 – 3
1973 – 0
1974 – 1
1975 – 0
1976 – 4
1977 – 7
1978 – 2
1979 – 2
1980 – 3
1981 – 2
1982 – 4
1983 – 3
1984 – 9
1985 – 3
1986 – 4
1987 – 2
1988 – 0
1989 – 2
1990 – 2
1991 – 4
1992 – 4
1993 – 5
1994 – 4
1995 – 4
1996 – 0
1997 – 3
1998 – 4
1999 – 3
2000 – 4
2001 – 4
2002 – 2
2003 – 5
2004 – 4
2005 – 12
2006 – 13
2007 – 8
2008 – 25
2009 – 16
2010 – 29

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