This Sunday May 20, the first Nadandolibre openwater challenge , with coach Jose Diaz from Nadandolibre with swimmer HHector, who will swim 5km butterfly in open water; Location Lagunas de Ruidera.   (

A Frenchman who lost his limbs in an accident has completed the first part of his challenge to swim between five continents.

Philippe Croizon swam from Papua New Guinea to Indonesia with long-distance swimmer Arnaud Chassery and a local man who joined them to show his support.

Mr Croizon, who uses prosthetic limbs with flippers attached, took seven-and-a-half hours to swim the stretch.

He lost his limbs 18 years ago while adjusting a TV aerial on a roof.

"It was very, very hard," he said after the event, which involved crossing 20km (12 miles) between two points on New Guinea island which is shared between the two countries.

"It took us an hour-and-a-half more than we expected because we had to swim against the currents," he said.

He said they did not come across any sharks or jellyfish, but were joined by a Papua New Guinean man named Zet Tampa, who swam with them to show solidarity, Mr Croizon tweeted.

The swim had been postponed as Mr Croizon waited for a permit to enter Indonesia, which he received late on Wednesday.

from the H₂Open Newsletter no.15

At our H2Open Day recently the water temperature was a little over 12 degrees Centigrade. Some people swam in full wetsuits with neoprene hats, gloves and socks, and still found it cold. Others swam in skimpy Lycra costumes, and having broken the ice to swim over the winter, found the Reading Lake 'positively balmy'. They would have been offended if we asked them to wear a wetsuit.

For many people, jumping into 12 degree water, with or without a wetsuit, is a challenge. It's cold enough to stimulate cold water shock, which causes a sharp, involuntary intake of breath, and can result in water inhalation or even loss of consciousness through hyperventilation. Once you're over the initial shock it you may feel pain on any exposed parts of skin, particularly your face, and some people suffer from 'ice-cream headaches'.

Other people, through a combination of genetics, build, acclimatisation and mental preparation, find 12 degrees quite tolerable.

Press release Zurich, 15 May 2012  http://www.myswitzerland.com/blue

The Swiss water ambassador Ernst Bromeis wanted to swim the Rhine from its source to its mouth. Today, he has to give up his vision after having swum approx. 400 kilometers. His health does not permit continuing.

SYDNEY — A limbless Frenchman planning to make four challenging swims around the world was delayed from starting his epic journey in Papua New Guinea on Monday by a paperwork problem.

Philippe Croizon, who lost both his arms and legs in an electrical accident in 1994, planned to leave the Pacific country's remote west to begin swimming to Indonesia's Papua province.

But a delay in official permission has meant that he now hopes to begin the swim -- which he will complete with the aid of special prostheses -- on Wednesday.

"It's a problem of getting official authorisation because they consider this project as an activity... it's not just a question of getting over the border," Robert Iseni, who is travelling with Croizon, told AFP.

"They want a more consequential document in terms of security and the activity we are undertaking."

source: bostonglobe.com by John Powers

It’s not as though he was the first guy to splash around in Walden Pond. Henry David Thoreau paddled across it, generations of skinny-dippers have immersed themselves, and triathletes train there. But when Alex Meyer does his extended up-and-backs at the Concord swimming hole, he eventually attracts a cadre of the curious.

“They’ll look at me like I have two heads,’’ said the 23-year-old Harvard graduate. “What’s this guy doing?’’

Just getting in some outdoor work while he preps for this summer’s Olympics in London, where Meyer will be the only US male in the 10-kilometer open-water swim. Because of the recent unseasonable conditions, he hasn’t been making the trek to Walden. He has had to use the “endless pool’’ - essentially a chlorinated treadmill where Meyer can go nowhere fast for three hours at a time - at his alma mater’s indoor facility next to the river.

He and his fellow open-water swimmers inhabit the wild side of the sport. While the Phelpses and Coughlins are doing flip turns in natatoriums, their alfresco counterparts are competing in rivers and harbors and lakes. Their shortest event - 5 kilometers - is more than three times longer than anything indoors.

The Rhine Falls, a mystery since the beginning. How will Ernst negotiate it. Jump into the roaring water? That would be too dangerous. By rappelling? That was widely discussed in the run-up to this journey. During yesterday evening's briefing it turned out to be unfeasible due to the high water levels at the moment. That's why Ernst and Peter Gujan — who had spent the whole morning in the water — took their kayak at noon and went around the falls on foot. Was the whole campaign a failure because of that?

Many questions…
On May 1st Ernst started with the clear intention of swimming from source to confluence. In the last few days one could regularly find him in a kayak. Critical bystanders were rightly asking themselves: Is it because of the coldness? If so, why was the month of may chosen for this journey? Was the timetable too ambitious? Or did the swiss ambassador of water simply overstimate himself?

Those who know Ernst know that with good general conditions this man is capable of unbelievable achievements. He's proven as much in his last two projects of his water trilogy. Ernst agreed to swim in may to the best of his knowledge. Now the water values are below average. The stage plan was dicussed with professionals and locals in advance. Its reliability could have only been proven with a dry run from Lake Toma to the North Sea. Now Ernst advances much too fast on one day and then much too slowly on another.

IN exactly 100 days, a St Neots man hopes to swim his way into the record books by becoming the 10th and oldest person to swim breaststroke across the English Channel.

Father-of-two Bryn Dymott will set out from Dover Harbour on Thursday, August 16 to navigate 21 miles through some of the harshest elements and choppiest waters at temperatures of little more than 10 degrees Celsius.

The 49-year-old from Love’s Farm intends to emulate Captain Matthew Webb, the first person to swim the Channel unassisted, in 1875.

Mr Dymott, who made his first foray into open water swimming in the River Great Ouse, where he regularly trains, hopes to raise thousands of pounds for the charity Parkinson’s UK.

source: byronnews.com.au

YESTERDAY'S Byron Bay Winter Whales Ocean Swim Classic ended in a massive surf rescue in rough conditions between Wategos and The Pass at Byron Bay.

The main event was cancelled after conditions proved to be dangerous during the junior swim in which young competitors had to be rescued.

Shortly before 10am organisers told the 2000 competitors the main event would not go ahead.

However, as many as 600 ignored the direction and took to the water to undertake the 2.2km swim.

"F*** it. I'm swimming," one keen swimmer was heard to say.

As the throng of swimmers dived into the water one of the bewildered organisers said, "What can I do? I'm not Moses."

The swimmers set off from Wategos but began to get into trouble as they headed north toward Little Wategos.

Some of the swimmers who made it around the headland were rescued in waters off The Pass.

Rubber duckies and jet-skis were deployed to pluck those who were struggling from the water and ferry them to shore while hundreds of people watched on.

Reports on the number of people rescued varied greatly.