Swimmers Heading Home And In The Ocean
As strictly controlled lockdowns are being replicated from city to city and country to country, swimmers around the world are finding their pools are being closed.
While the average open water swimmer is not necessarily impacted with a closure of their local pool – because they can always use their favorite open body of water – for all the Olympic 10K Marathon Swim qualifiers, these closures are a time of stress, frustration and worry.
American 2020 Tokyo Olympians Ashley Twichell and Haley Anderson were among a group of USA National Team and Junior National Team swimmers who were training at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado, but were suddenly told to go home after the state authorities ordered the facility to close in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to SwimSwam.
Olympic swimmers who have previously trained at American universities were told – like the rest of the student bodies – to leave campus and cease their pool workouts. Same with swimmers from around the world with hopes to represent their country at the Olympic.
The Brazilian, Chinese, French, Irish, New Zealand Olympics Trials were rescheduled, the Canadian Olympic Trials will be postponed or cancelled, and the Russian (April 4th – 9th) and Japanese (April 2nd – 7th) Olympic Trials are remain on schedule, but are closed to spectators. Meanwhile, the British Swimming Championships, the Czech Republic Grand Prix Ostrava, the Danish Open, the Hungarian Olympic Trials, the Italian Absolute Championships, the Lithuanian Championships, the German National Championship, the Polish National Championships, the South American Championships, the Spanish Olympic Trials, and the Swiss Olympic Trials were all cancelled.
Dave Marsh might be taking the most innovative approach to this unprecedented situation for his pool swimmers. He has coached 49 Olympians from 19 different countries with a number of Olympic hopefuls training in La Jolla, California. He told the New York Times, “If things don’t change dramatically, I don’t see how they don’t change the schedule. Let’s just do it one year later. The sooner we make that kind of decision the better.”
His advice is echoed by the #stopolympics campaign that has originated out of Italy.
But with the IOC’s recent decision to not plan any drastic decisions about the Tokyo 2020 Games means that the IOC remains fully committed to the Tokyo Olympics being held between July 24th – August 9th, despite the global spread of the coronavirus.
Meanwhile Marsh told his swimmers to get a wetsuit and plan on having swimming in the local bay or in Pacific Ocean.
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