What is open water swimming?

Physically, you build muscle and cardio-respiratory endurance in the same way in both disciplines. However, there are several differences.

Firstly, the setting! A pool versus a lake, or a river, or the sea… What could possibly be better than the scenery of open water swimming? It is always changing. The same landscape can be different on different days: the colour of the water, the changing tides… All these variations give a unique character to each swim. No chance of getting bored!

In fact, in nature, swimmers have to be particularly adaptable as they have to take various factors into account:
- weather conditions: wind, swell, waves...
- any currents,
- water temperature,
- the geographical features of the location.
In a pool, there is none of this to contend with.

To swim straight in open water you need to find your bearings despite these variations. In a pool, you simply stick to your lane. Outdoors, you learn to stay on course using the highest visual reference point you can find. This way, when you raise your head out of the water to take a breath, you can immediately spot it. This technique, called spotting or sighting, is unique to open water swimming. It's a great thing to practice so that you know where to go when all you have before you is the horizon.

Outside of a pool environment, you can forget about lap times! With the changing elements, your swimming speed varies and so does the time it takes to get from A to B. Less pressure, more pleasure.

What Giuliana has to say: "The swim I do most frequently is Socoa Bay in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France. With variations in the weather, tide... It's different every day!"

This sport is accessible to everyone. The only requirement is having a body of water close to home: a lake, a watercourse or even a beach open to swimmers. By taking it at your own pace and setting goals suited to your physical abilities, everyone can find their place.

Of course, open water swimming is a particularly good choice for pool swimmers who want to be more in touch with nature or who want to explore a new playground. It is another way to challenge yourself and discover a new sport.

For some, it is about learning to be comfortable in open water, learning a different technique... Lastly, taking up open water swimming is like switching from cycling to mountain biking, from triathlon to swimrun, or from jogging to trail running.

What Giuliana has to say: "As a former pool swimmer, I found myself less and less interested in speed. I was invited to go wild swimming and fell in love with open water swimming. It's freedom!"

Open water swimming allows you to develop certain qualities, such as:
- adaptability,
- endurance,
- or tactical thinking (especially if your goal is to compete).
In fact, some compare the discipline to cycling in the way that athletes learn to manage their body and their energy.

Plus, to each their own challenge! Challenging yourself is at the heart of open water swimming; the practice allows you to test your limits and set your own goals. For some, it is about going swimming for the first time somewhere where you can't touch the bottom, forgetting any fears you may have of the water, for others it will be about swimming 1 km, 5 km, 10 km and so on. The important thing: challenging yourself and discovering the joys of doing so. This discipline helps develop self-confidence.

But where does the practice of open water swimming come from? Although, in our collective subconscious, swimming is something mainly done in a pool, it goes without saying that open water swimming is where swimming originated. Think about it: the majority of our swimming pools were not built until the second half of the 20th century!

So how about we go back in time to get a better understanding?

You thought sport and literature weren't a good match? When it comes to open water swimming, it's quite the opposite! It was the poet Lord Byron himself who kicked off the popularity of the practice in 1810. During a tour of Europe, he decided to pay a form of homage to Leander of Greek mythology when staying near the site of this 1st century legend. Quick reminder: the story of a young man who crossed the Hellespont (the Dardanelles in present-day Turkey) every evening to join his beloved.

The British poet swam the same 4 km strait. Buoyed by this success, he repeated the experience in Venice in 1818, swimming for 4 hours and 12 minutes straight. This was the beginning of the craze in Europe, races and swimming clubs sprang up over the course of the 19th century.

Matthew Webb was an English captain. At the age of 27, in August 1875, he set himself a challenge: to set out from Dover and swim across the Channel. He succeeded and made it to Calais 21 hours and 45 minutes later. And so the first open water marathon entered the history books. The press covered the event and contributed to the rise in popularity of the discipline. The public went mad for these "deep water" events in the sea, lakes or rivers. More than 2,000 swimmers have since connected the two shores of the Channel.

During this period, the construction of swimming pools increased and, for a time, professional open water swimming was left by the wayside in favour of pool swimming. Despite this shift of the sport to the pool, there remained many open water enthusiasts around the world. Amateur marathon races were also very successful, such as the 12.3 km crossing of Lake Geneva and the Lake Windermere 16 km.

Interest in open water swimming started to grow again. The first world championships in the discipline were held in 1991 in Perth, Australia, in the Swan River. It was an independently run event until 2010.

And the Olympic events in all this? Swimming was an open-water event at the end of the 19th century, before swimming pools took over in 1908 as the home of the various swimming disciplines. It was not until 2008, in Beijing, that “open water swimming” became an event in its own right: open water 10 km marathon swimming.

As we have seen, open water swimming is much more than just a sport. Pushing your boundaries is at its heart and this discipline is sometimes headline grabbing. Think back to the exploits of Lord Byron and Matthew Webb.

There is an endless number of goals to be reached, with records from the most classic to the most unusual achieved by experienced athletes:
- Distance record: Lilian Aymeric, 236 km from Mauritius to Reunion in 3 days, in 2016;
Number of consecutive crossings of a strait: Sarah Thomas swam the Channel four times in a row in 2019, totalling 214 km in 54 hours and 10 minutes;
- The oldest marathon swimmer: Toshio Tominaga was 73 years old in 2016 when he braved the powerful currents of the Tsugaru Strait in Japan, covering 38 km in 10 hours;
- - Swimming across the North Pole: Lewis Pugh in 2007, 1 km in 18 min and 50 seconds with a water temperature of -1.8°C;
- Longest distance towing a log: In 2018, Ross Edgley towed a 45 kg log between Martinique and Saint Lucia, swimming 102 km in 20 hours.

It is in this spirit that the "Oceans Seven" endurance challenge was conceived. It consists of swimming the seven most inhospitable straits in the world, those plagued by strong variations in current. The straits are as follows: the English Channel, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Tsugaru Strait in Japan, the Cook Strait in New Zealand, the Moloka’i Channel in Hawaii, the Catalina Channel in the United States and the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland.