in another thread, midwest race director steve tomboni wrote, “2013 saw the first race I’ve ever hear of WITHOUT LIFE GUARDS. None. Zero. Another race with NO SWIM SAFETY plan at all.”
i don’t know the details of the races he’s talking about, except to note to him in a PM that i do know about the race with no lifeguards and i’m investigating that. turns out it was not one of the two races he’s writing about. so i’ve asked him for details and i’ll be investigating these races as well.
but i do wonder to what degree this is, or is becoming, an issue (since we may have 3 races in question already). can any of you tell me, via PM or email, if there are races you participated in where there were NO lifeguards? please don’t respond to this with anything that could be considered an opinion. look at it like this. if i wanted to know about a music concert you attended where the artist did not show up at all, i would not want gripes about the sound system, or they ran out of beer. i’m asking just a specific thing, and in this case it’s not whether there was NO musician at the music concert, it’s whether there were no, zero, nada, lifeguards in the swim. or, whether they were there but not deployed in the water.
i would not expect them to be deployed in the water in a pool swim, or a canal swim, but if there were no lifeguards deployed in the water in a swim that went out a fair distance in the ocean or a lake and then returned to the finish, that would be an issue.
please don’t name names of races here in this thread. just, if you were physically at a race that fits this description i’d like you to privately contact me