Courtesy of Penny Dain, London Marathon Events.
The sport of open water swimming is getting bigger and bigger and bigger all the time. There are more events, more participants, more sponsorship, more exposure, more equipment, more camps and clinics, more charities, more everything.
There are longer events, colder events, tougher events.
And the sport is now about to get even larger, especially in London with the emergence of London Marathon Events in the sport.
The London Marathon Events team organizes 7 world-class mass sporting participation events that includes running, cycling and swimming with the Virgin Money London Marathon, the Prudential RideLondon festival of cycling and the new Swim Serpentine.
Swim Serpentine is a 2-day open water swimming festival held in Hyde Park’s Serpentine in London on September 24th-25th.
Penny Dain explains, “The first day features a mass participation one-mile swim for up to 6,000 swimmers. The second day will be the British Open Water Swimming Championships that includes an elite invitation event.”
Hugh Brasher, Event Director for London Marathon Events, says: “Swim Serpentine will be our first mass participation swimming event and our aim is to grow it into the largest open water swimming event in the UK. The Serpentine is a wonderful location for open water swimming and is famous worldwide through the London 2012 Olympic Games.
We want to encourage all ages and abilities to take part, to raise money for charities through swimming and to provide a platform for developing elite British swimming talent.”
The scale at which London Marathon Events works on is massive. Since the London Marathon was founded in 1981, participants in events organized by London Marathon Events have raised more than £800 million (US$1,137,072,000) that has been donated to the charities of their choosing.
For more information, visit www.swimserpentine.co.uk.
The public ballot entry system for Swim Serpentine is open and will close on May 13th or when 16,000 applications have been received.
Copyright © 2016 by World Open Water Swimming Association