With its northerly position on the globe, Canada is too cold much of the year for open water swimming in its lakes or along its coasts. On the other hand, Canada hosts several major open water swimming events including a FINA 10K Marathon Swimming World Cup, a FINA Grand Prix and the new World Junior Open Water Swimming Championships.
As the next best thing to practicing in lakes, Club de Natation CALAC in LaSalle, Québec will host Open Water Provincial Challenge on March 25th-27th in its 50-meter pool. In the pool, these POW races will include a 2K, 3K, 5K, 10K and 4 x 2.5K relay, divided by age and standards. Division based on times from the 800-meter and 1500-meter freestyle enables competitive heats.
“We have produced several high-level open water swimmers in Quebec recently and we wish to continue this trend. Our goal is to help the development of this sport both in Québec and throughout Canada. We want to ultimately create an avenue through which we can develop a strong team for the 2012 Olympics, in London. This competition is the first step in the plan. We hope to build on the success of this event and organize several more, perhaps even creating an open water championship circuit that could include several competitions throughout the year.”
The Calac Open Water Challenge in The Aquadôme will also include 1K and 2K races for Paralympic swimmers that are based on the Swimming Canada and Féderation de Natation du Québec rules with a time limit of 80 minutes for the 5K and 2 hours 45 minutes for the 10K.
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