What was the water temp?

In sep, on the saturday for the women, water temp was 15 C 59F, 24 hours later it was 19 C 66F.

18.9 degrees Celsius. It was warm.

Yeah 15 C was cold, that would have been a problem for some. 19C felt good.

Out of interest, why do race organizers not encourage weak swimmers to use the safety devices like those inflatable belts, or the ones that attach to the back of one leg? Are they legal for WTC races?
In the 12 or so WTC events I've done, I've never seen anyone wearing one, but always figured it would be something to make a weak swimmer feel more confident.
Its unfortunate that not all IM competitors are olympic class swimmers like all of us on ST............................. ;)

What are you talking about?

The thread is talking about triathon and you are talking about the IM? What do you want this option to be - skip down the side of the pool, then crawl back, then hop down then run the last leg while others do fly, back, breast and free (an IM)

Hmm, sounds like my first time swimming in Hawaii. 7 foot shore break and since it was xterra, means had to navigate it twice doing an Australian m. At least for the start they did time it between the bigger swells, but you had to time the breaks so you didn't get crushed.

The swim is at the beginning of the race when anxiety is high and heartrates are up. The athletes are also tight at the start which ups overall anxiety. It is the most dangerous leg based on how quickly one can drown. I would not be quick to assume the athletes that died last weekend were not fit or prepared for the swim. IM should do as much as possible to make sure swim conditions are safe, use controlled, staggered starts whenever possible, and have as many trained lifeguards and volunteers patrolling the course as logistically possible. Anything to increase safety for this initial leg should be their #1 priority. That being said, there is still much inherent risk swimming in open water.

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"The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue."
- Napoleon Bonaparte

They do this but I haven't seen any race where water conditions were the issue as opposed to something medically wrong with the athlete in the first place.

My friend died running on a treadmill. That had nothing to do with water. The conditions are not the problem.

tl;dr; the whole thread.

But, organizer do not "send swimmers out". They allow people to make the decision to swim or not to swim. No one is forcing anyone into the water.

Not to mention, most of the deaths are from causes other than the conditions being too difficult, or the athletes being too weak of swimmers. It's generally an underlying, undiagnosed, medical condition.

Most of the time, when a swim is cancelled, a good number, if not most of the people there could have completed the swim, but in an abundance of caution, for the small number of people who would make a poor decision for themselves, it's cancelled, and the majority of people are deprived of the opportunity to swim.

fixed

I also believe that the rising costs of events may have a small impact on this as well. If an athlete gets to an event they have spent $50 on, and has second thoughts, it is a lot easier to bag the event then something they have spent $200+.

This is a very small part of the bigger picture, but the higher the cost, the higher the perceived obligation.

this is absurd. so you're saying if "anyone is having difficulty" in the swim, then nobody should swim? What about the folks that are always unprepared for the swim? People that refuse to put in swim training to get fit for a race? Come on. Triathlon has risks. Bike racing has risks. Marathon running has risks. Life has risks.

this is absurd. //

This whole thread has so much misinformation, hard to know where to start. Some bullet points:


Their age is a very tiny part of the equation, lots of younger folks have died in swims.


Their abilities(which I know nothing of) is an even smaller part, world class OW pro swimmers die in the same way. People die at the front/middle/and back of the packs.


So who you gonna put a swim buoy on, everyone? And what does that do actually, isn't that what wetsuits do? They were not missing, they were taken to a hospital.


The conditions have little to nothing to do with this, I personally have been in flat as pancake races where this happens. IT feels good to some people to blame conditions, but all the stats just say it just doesn't matter, or if it does, it is not the determining factor in most cases.


Same thing goes for water temps, you will find these deaths in everything from frigid water, to 85+. But at the very extremes, this factor may be a bigger trigger than other things.


Swimming OW mass starts is NOTHING like going off the blocks in a masters meet. Yes they both have anxiety, but only one comes with a big does of panic for your life. Masters swimmers that swim meets do not often if ever, feel that panic. But believe me, some of them do, and the majority of most of the other swimmers do, some each and every swim they do.


The highest heart rates in a race for most people, come in the swim. Most folks are not warmed up properly, have not practiced the actual basket of things that get you into this panic, and it is a loop that generates its own death spiral once it starts.


Swimming is the only sport of the 3 that has metered breathing, and the only one where you just cannot stop and rest and just ask for help. And that feeling adds to the panic once things go awry. When you feel something going wrong with your heart, your help is not immediate, apparent, and it just somehow feels different in the water for most.


One thing these two men do have in common is that it is mostly men this happens to. Of course there are way more men in races to begin with, but the huge numbers this is happening to should have more women if it were spread evenly. Not sure what to think of that, other than men in general approach sport different than most women.


I have done well over a 1000 OW races in my life, and unfortunately for me, I did have a cardiac event in one, but survived it. I have probably also been in a position to have others, but then I recognized them for what they were and was able to back off before total disaster. I continue to swim these races, but with knowledge that hardly anyone else has, and many are not so lucky with their outcomes. But for every death we see here, there were 10 times more in that race that were lucky, and close to that edge, you all know who you are. Heed that warning next time, go home to your family.

Become a duathlete. Problem solved (No pink!).

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#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

Monty - Would you agree that strong swimmers are consid less likely than weak swimmers to have a cardiac event in an OW event??? Also, when you had your cardiac event in the water, were you able to keep swimming at a slower pace or did you have to be pulled from the water???

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I wouldn't agree with that at all. Cardiac events don't really care how technically strong a swimmer you are. There will be some correlation with overall cardiovascular fitness, I'm sure, but strong swimmers can have a cardiac event in the water just as easily as a weaker swimmer.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Monty - Would you agree that strong swimmers are consid less likely than weak swimmers to have a cardiac event in an OW event???//

I believe that a lot of people think this, but the stats don't seem to bear that out. And when you say strong swimmer, I'm taking about the froth 1/3 of the field, not the pointy end. OF course pointy end folks have died this way too, I was at the pointy end when I had my episode, and had the race been longer than the 1k it was, I would have been pulled out of the water, instead of barley limping in and making it to where I could stand and recover a bit. But damage was done, and a quick trip to the emergency room that week had me fitted for my pacemaker.


I can think of 3 other times I had near misses, twice at very high altitude mass start swims, those can be very tough if you dont know what is coming. Last one was a 1200 person mass start where 300 yards in I was still in the scrum, but missed a couple breaths, swam over my head to be where I was, and I had to shut down completely for about 4 minutes before I could soft swim the next mile and a half. So it is no mystery to me what causes these things, but it is a large basket of items that needs several to happen for this rare event to be fatal.


Sleep
Minerals( primarily magnesium and sodium)
Stress
Caffine
Alchol
Anxiety
Warm up
Conditions(which lead to more stress)
Crowds
Being kicked or hit, or just missing breaths for whatever reason
Pacing
Ability to cope
Underlying conditions(which seems to be a lot lower than what people seem to believe about these things)
There are more


People assume that these people drown, which is the end result of course. But like Whitney Houston drowning in a few inches in her bathtub, something else happed first to cause that death, water just happens to be the medium that is unfortunately around after a heart attack or stroke, or other condition that affects breathing.

Totally agree with this. The water is inherently more dangerous because you can't breathe it. I would add that a lot of triathletes are slaves to their HR monitors, and most of those don't work or aren't practical to check during the swim.

It is also my experience that doing a standalone OW swim event, which is mostly swimmers, will start out at a reasonable pace and build, whereas a mass-start tri everyone is blasting and bumping. To me, this points to a 'triathlete' problem as I have seen the same behavior across choppy and calm, hot and cold water. The approach (poor fitness and/or poor pacing) taken in triathlon likely compounds whatever proclivity the athlete has toward a cardiac event.

However, I'm unaware of many world-class OW swimmers that have died in competition other than Fran Crippen, and I believe that was not attributed (definitively) to a cardiac event, but rather he over heated and maybe passed out, and in the water that is deadly. I've passed out on the run of an Olympic tri and ended up in the hospital for 2 days, simply because I pushed too hard on a surprisingly hot day and literally ran out of juice. The ER doc initially tried to attribute it to a heart condition (without any testing) but it was later determined to be over exertion with a side of rhabdo.

I'm not disputing that there are athletes of various abilities that have died during the swim, but I do think at some point there is a 'fully prepared' ability level and any cause of death is not due to the same panic+cardiac event that we've seen in many tri-swim deaths.

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I hear you on the 400 IM, but don't confuse oxygen debt with other kinds of stress. Yes, in a 400 IM you might be on the verge of blacking out or puking, but that is all self-inflicted and you can quickly remedy that by just slowing down a tad. And of course a 400 IM is going to feel harder than a triathlon swim, because you aren't subconsciously pacing (saving yourself) for a bike and run right after the swim--you are just going as hard as you can for a 100 fly, 100 back, 100 breast and 100 free.
The problem with OWS races and triathlon swims is not just that you might push yourself too hard (self inflicted stress), but that you might encounter blows from other swimmers. That MIGHT happen at a swim meet warm up; it almost always happens in a competitive OWS or triathlon swim.
And while I agree that a hard breaststroke kick to the head during a meet warm up is a possibility, I'm not so sure you could ever be kicked in the chest the same way as you can in an OWS start, where the person in front of you might go from a vertical treading water position to a horizontal freestyle sprint, at the same time that you are doing the same thing.
Anyhow, everyone's experience is different. I've done way more triathlons and OWS races in the past 35 years than I have done masters meets, and from a safety standpoint I don't think anything that could happen in a swim meet (with lifeguards nearby, and dozens of other swimmers and officials looking on) would be more stressful or dangerous than getting clobbered or kicked in an OWS in the ocean.....

I consider myself a triathlete now, but I've done a lot of stand-alone OWS races (like a dozen per year for at least the last 5 years). My experience is that the start is pretty much chaotic whether in triathlon or an OWS race. I can't think of an OWS race that I've done where "most" of the swimmers start at an "even pace" (meaning about the same pace as they can average for the whole swim). Whether it is a triathlon or an OWS race, my experience is that things rarely thin out until at least 200-300 meters into the swim; at that point, the strong swimmers keep up the same pace, and the others start to fade....but that first 200-300 meters is usually a scrum for a large number of the swimmers until things settle down.
BTW-Pretty much every 5k or 10K running race I've ever done is similar; in the first mile there are a lot of people going had and fast, but after that reality sets in and the fast runners just keep going at the same pace while most of the others fade back. Exact same thing, pacing-wise, as I tend to see in triathlon and OWS races.

Yes, our experiences sound different, and I've raced in over 250 triathlons and maybe 100+ OWS races. Probably much depends upon the types of races you do and where you find yourself in the field of swimmers. I have never been fast enough to be the first one to the buoy (no matter what angle I take) but I've always been in the top 20% of of my AG in the triathlon swim (even at World Championships of every distance) and I've found it to be quite crowded when you start a race with other competitive people--kind of the nature of the beast, I guess.

Details regarding this study - Death and Cardiac Arrest in U.S. Triathlon Participants, 1985 to 2016: A Case Series - have likely been posted on ST previously - https://annals.org/...pants-1985-2016-case There is a lengthy discussion of swimming near the end of the article.

Results:
A total of 135 sudden deaths, resuscitated cardiac arrests, and trauma-related deaths were compiled; mean (±SE) age of victims was 46.7 ± 12.4 years, and 85% were male. Most sudden deaths and cardiac arrests occurred in the swim segment (n = 90); the others occurred during bicycling (n = 7), running (n = 15), and postrace recovery (n = 8). Fifteen trauma-related deaths occurred during the bike segment. Incidence of death or cardiac arrest among USAT participants (n = 4 776 443) was 1.74 per 100 000 (2.40 in men and 0.74 in women per 100 000; P < 0.001). In men, risk increased substantially with age and was much greater for those aged 60 years and older (18.6 per 100 000 participants). Death or cardiac arrest risk was similar for short, intermediate, and long races (1.61 vs. 1.41 vs. 1.92 per 100 000 participants). At autopsy, 27 of 61 decedents (44%) had clinically relevant cardiovascular abnormalities, most frequently atherosclerotic coronary disease or cardiomyopathy.

I'm a slow swimmer compared to many here. top 50% or top 3rd (if I'm having a great day) in the IM/HIM events. For my speed, I learned pretty quickly avoiding the scrum at the start is in my best interest at the start. My day is not getting made by trying to get in that mess and save a few seconds. That of course, doesn't mean I haven't gotten mixed up in it. Luckily I mostly get my ankles grabbed which always seems odd as it feels intentional. I know I prefer the rolling starts though. Chattanooga the rolling start is nice. And the river is so wide that there is plenty of space for everybody. But for the fast people I can see where they stay bunched.

Those results are fascinating, and this particular conclusion seems highly important. That means 34 of the 61 people (56 percent) who died of a cardiac issue during a triathlon didn't have heart abnormalities. Meaning, they died of a heart attack brought on by another factor like a panic attack or heat stroke, etc.

It would be interesting to know what is the percentage of those 34 died during the swim portion.

All that said, it goes to show you how important keeping an eye on your ticker is, especially for older men.

I think the opposite. Adults need to take some personal responsibility. Look at the conditions vs their expertise and experience, and make their own minds up.
They are not being forced to swim. It's their choice.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.