With the support of Swimming Quebec, the CALAC swim team hosted 150 swimmers from 13 clubs at the 2011 Open Water Provincial Championships in the Aquadome in Lasalle, Québec. The swimmers participated in Pool Open Water 2K, 3K, 5K and 10K events.

CALAC Head Coach, Mohamed Marouf explains, “Our objective is to develop as many open water swimmers as possible, in Québec and Canada. It was difficult to create this new type of meet. We had to establish new rules that merged open water and pool swimming. Québec officials and coaches conversed before the event to discuss the rules and the best way to merge the two sports.”

Québec has a great history in open water swimming. Québec annually hosts some of the best races in the world including the FINA 10K World Cup Traversée Internationale du Lac St-Jean 10K, the 32K FINA Grand Prix Traversée Internationale du Lac St-Jean and the the 34K FINA Grand Prix Traversée Internationale du Lac Memphrémagog. CALAC and Québec honored the late Fran Crippen by establishing The Fran Crippen Cup, along with prize money, that was presented to the female and male winner of the 10K race.

The winners were Caitlin Nolan and Ahmed Hisham Fathy, both of CALAC, who were presented the Cup by former pro marathon swimmer Philippe Debrueil. Philippe had competed against Fran for many years and was gracious to honor his friend in a tradition that will continue.

“Our goal is for this meet is to continue growing with as many teams from all over Canada as possible,” said Coach Marouf.

With the weather still cold and the water freezing, the Provincial Championships were a great way to kick-off the open water swimming season in Québec.

Copyright © 2011 by Open Water Source