PRESS RELEASE: 25 July 2017 Marathon Swims:
Marathon Swims, the ultimate swimming challenge launched today. The innovative Marathon Swims event will debut Saturday 11th November 2017. The venue will be the iconic London Aquatics Centre, on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, home of swimming during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
A Marathon Swim is a 10k challenge which debuted at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, as an open water event. Marathon Swims redefines the challenge with an indoor, pool-based 10k Marathon Swim, 5k Half Marathon and 1k Challenge distance swims. A team Marathon 10k is also available for teams of two swimmers.
Marathon Swims is designed to appeal to the millions of swimmers and ‘would be swimmers’ in the UK. Swimming is one of the UK’s largest sports with 4.86 million swimming at least twice in the past 28 days (Sport England’s Active Lives survey). However, very few pool-based mass participation swimming events exist. The Marathon Swims event format helps make the progression through the challenge more interesting for spectators and participants.
Founder of Marathon Swims, Diccon Loy stated, “The levels of innovation and development seen in other sports have not yet surfaced in the sport of swimming. Our aim was to create a mass participation experience and challenge in the pool to rival the energy and excitement seen in some running, cycling and triathlon events. Marathon Swims is unique and unlike anything ever staged in a pool before. We’re really excited to be launching swimming’s own pool-based marathon challenge”.
Andrew Clark, National Sports & Aquatics Manager at GLL the operators of London Aquatics Centre under the Better brand, said, “We are a proud founding partner of the Marathon Swims event. As a social enterprise, one of our main organisational aims is to help get more people more active more often in the local communities we operate in, which this innovative event will help us achieve.”
“Everyone at the London Aquatics Centre is excited to host the first ever Marathon Swims event and the first in the series. Marathon Swims will provide our Better members, local residents and people across the UK with the motivation to get into the pool, improve their swimming ability, achieve a goal, and it's also a great opportunity to raise money for charity”.