Safety while swimming

Stephen Clendenin

English 202, Writing About Sports

Blog Post #2:

            From March 18^th through 20^th, 2011, in San Francisco, there will be an Open Water Swimming Safety Conference, hosted by U.S. Masters Swimming, and Pacific Masters Swimming. San Francisco is one of the open water swimming capitols of the world, and very soon it will be the host city for this event, during which policies will be discussed concerning topics such as: mass participation swims, competitive races, training, and solo channel swimming. These policies will affect swimmers of all ages. Topics such as warm and cold water conditions, marine life, hazards, and quality of safety equipment will be discussed. This conference will also provide a forum where interested and experienced people can openly discuss the various issues related to open water swimming, such as hypothermia, and human intervention emergencies. “The experts will talk about what goes into the pre-race planning, the equipment necessary, communication protocols, documentation and how professional life savers can work with race officials and race volunteers.” Two famous open water swimmer advocates, Shelley Taylor-Smith and Lewis Pugh, will also be present.

            The goal of this meeting is to protect the athletes. Veteran open water swimmers usually know what they’re getting into. Like many sports and athletic events, there are always new members who wish to join. It is meetings like these that help provide these new athletes with safety guidelines, and beneficial protocols. This conference has many goals, one of which is to make new athletes aware of new issues or dangers involved with open water swimming. With open water swimming, there are numerous ‘What-if’ scenarios that are gone over by the authorities. I believe that open water swimming is one of the more dangerous sports out there today, for reasons such as: cold water temperatures affecting the body’s temperature, being trapped alone out in open water, sunburns, seaweed, marine life, and rough water conditions. I will be discussing how to avoid these dangers in later blog posts, as well as after the conference is over.

For more information about this event, click here.