Shortly before the beginning of the open water 25km swim, the longest event on the World Championship schedule, two of the three entered American swimmers, Alex Meyer and Haley Anderson, withdrew from the race, citing concerns over the temperature of the water. The water was measured at 30.4 degrees already at 5:30 AM, which was about half-an-hour before the start of the race.
The heat has been a growing concern as the water temperature has climbed throughout the week. Even in the shorter races, when the water was about 1 degree cooler (a not insignificant amount) there were reports of as many as 6 competitors having to cut out midrace (in the women’s 10k), including several that had to be carried off on stretchers.
According to reports from local media, there was a fleet of ambulences with dozens of paramedics on shore, along with dozens of lifeboats in the water, and though some swimmers had complications, it doesn’t sound like any athlete in those races ever went over the edge towards a life-threatening situation. This harkens back to comments made in a blog by former Open-Water star Chloe Sutton, that the focus of open water safety should be just as much on sufficient monitoring of the athletes as it is on limiting water and air temperatures.
Over the longer course, which usually last between five-and-a-half and six hours, however, many athletes simply thought that the environmental factors were too much to feel safe. After consultation with USA Swimming, Meyer (the defending 25k open water champion) and Anderson chose not to swim. Meyer already earned an Olympic berth in the 10k race, but Anderson gave up her only chance to swim of the meet. It’s hard to blame them. Even with all of the rules and regulations, it’s still been less than a year since the tragic passing of Fran Crippen.
The other women’s competitor, Claire Thompson, elected to swim the race (which should end in about 2 hours). Though USA Swimming strongly encouraged the athletes to withdraw, the American Amateur Sports Act (also known as the Ted Stevens Act) says that they can not actually prevent her from competing.
The conditions were probably appropriate for the shorter races, but for a 25k, temperatures above 30.4 degrees (86 degrees farenheit) is almost unbareable for over 5 and a half hours.
For most runners, 86 degree temperatures for a marathon, which lasts just over 2 horus at the elite level, is a pretty high temperature. Now consider a swim twice that long in water at that. Though athletes still sweat in water, that sweat does an amazingly poor job of actually regulating body temperature in water compared to land.
The 25km race is a difficult beast. Conditions that are tolerable in a 5k or 10k can be extremely dangerous in a 25k. It’s going to continue to be difficult to schedule this sort of race in ideal conditions in conjunction with larger World Championship events, and perhaps FINA needs to look into either eliminating the longer race from this championship or separating the open water events from the meet altogether, like they do in the non-Worlds years. It was too late to achieve that this year after the new focus on safety, but beginning in 2013, it has to be a realistic option.
Among other big names to withdraw from the race was Germany’s Thomas Lurz, who won the 5k race yesterday. After swimming the first three of the four events, Lurz probably had the best feel for the water and the course of anyone in the field, and it was a very telling sign that he chose to skip the 25k citing health concerns over the water temperature.
