Courtesy of Ram Barkai, International Ice Swimming Association.
Ram Barkai is transforming the International Ice Swimming Association into a more globally representative body.
“The International Ice Swimming Association board of directors is being reshuffled to reflect its global reach and move its activity centre from Cape Town, South Africa, its birth place, to the frozen world.
We would like to extended gratitude and well done to Kieron Palframan and Ryan Stramrood who were there from our first meeting and contributed a lot to International Ice Swimming Association and its development.
Ryan and Kieron are stepping down as IISA board members to make space for newcomers who will help us take it to the next level of global ICE Swimming experience.
IISA would like to welcome Richard Broer from the Netherland to the IISA Board. Richard is not a new face to open water swimming and he has been very instrumental, together with the Frozen Flying Dutch-Man, Fergil Hesterman in getting IISA Netherland off the ground.”
It has been quite a few months for Broer who was recently selected as an Honour Contributor in the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame in its Class of 2017.
The International Swimming Hall of Fame also recognized Broer for his extensive contributions to the administration of open water swimming with its 2017 Irving Davids/Captain Roger W. Wheeler Memorial Award.
The Irving Davids/Captain Roger W. Wheeler Memorial Award is presented annually to the organization or individual who has contributed the most to the administration of open water swimming.
Broer played a major role in developing open water swimming both domestically and internationally over the course of two decades including his stint as the Chairperson of the Technical Open Water Committee of Royal Netherlands Swimming Association.
He is responsible for publishing the annual open water publication with the national association events, an extensive brochure on the details of the national open waters swimming events. He brought the sport in the Netherlands to the Internet in 1998 with the establishment of www.noww.nl. One indicator of the success of open water swimming in the Netherlands are the double Dutch marathon swimming gold medal winners at the 2016 Rio Olympics: Sharon Van Rouwendaal and Ferry Weertman.
His other internet initiative – www.openwaterswimming.eu – is a website for the European community that focuses on the European event calendar.
Broer also coaches 20 IJsselmeer (22 km) relay teams over the years and a solo winner of the event plus a 100% success record for 7 English Channel relay teams including two world speed records. He is also an accomplished swimmer. In 1978, he won the Netherlands national 1500m competition with a time under 16 minutes. He completed several solo marathons including the 14.4 km Strait of Gibraltar, the 16 km Flanders Marathon twice, and the 22 km IJsselmeer swim three times.
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