davejustdave wrote:
lightheir wrote:
140triguy wrote:
I'd say triathletes are welcome to use one, they should just prepare to go slower than they would without, have terrible sighting, and risk inhaling a tube-full of water. That last one should be a headache at best (and nightmare at worst) for the race directors. They will have to have more lifeguards ready to make rescues of swimmers gagging and coughing up a lungful of water. Not to make light of a situation, but there have been some deaths in the swim portions of triathlons; the last thing we need is more deaths caused by someone gagging on a tube full of water, panicking, getting steamrolled by passing swimmers, sinking, and drowning.Overstating a bit? Drowning due to snorkel?! Please.
I think we experienced triathletes are getting a little too much of ourselves on this thread. Triathlon needs to hold steady and fight the decline in participating numbers. The swim is the #1 enemy of newby triathletes.
It's not wussification - snorkel or not, the swim is going to be really hard for all non-swim background new triathletes. We experienced folks can go as fast as we want - these newbs aren't slowing us down any, and are subsidizing our sport - without them, our races wouldn't happen!
Going to step in here at someone with about 15 years of experience combined between being an ocean lifeguard, and a paramedic.
Drowning from a snorkel is incredibly easy. Basically, you are mainlining water straight into your lungs if you inhale through a snorkel and get a bit of water in there. It literally only takes a couple ounces of water to drown someone, or, people can get laryngospasm from the water hitting their larynx, which would also cause them to panic. not to mention the introduction of water-borne bacteria directly into the lungs can lead to sepsis pretty quick. Sepsis that can kill you *eta: the sepsis thing is a days or weeks later thing*
I've seen all of those things happen to quite a lot of people just trying to swim in the ocean by themselves, not race while getting clobbered.
Experienced swimmers, free divers, excetera can better handle that, but I will bet you dimes to dollars that the vast majority of triathletes using a snorkel in a triathlon swim are neither experienced nor confident in the water.
The idea of encouraging people to wear snorkels on a triathlon swim in open water is insane to me. It seems like such an incredible safety risk.
Agree 100%. In a rough open water swim, I could see a snorkel being more of a danger. If anything gets into that snorkel, the risk of aspiration is quite high. I've seen accomplished masters swimmers in the pool have issues with snorkels when we're doing drills, and I myself have experienced a slight bit of panic when the snorkel wouldn't clear. In a pool setting, I was relatively safe...out in open water, it could have been much much worse.
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