Ice Swimming in Sochi?

Leonard_Jansen

For some reason (probably brain damage from childhood drug abuse), I seem to have in my head that ice swimming was to be a demonstration event at the Sochi Olympics. Is this true or just another of my daily hallucinations? If true, when is/was it and does anyone have a video link?

Speaking of Sochi, I am holding @niek personally responsible for the fact that the Dutch are cleaning everyone's clocks in speed-skating. I'm getting to the point that I feel homicidal every time I see orange.

-LBJ

gnome4766

It should definitely be a winter Olympic sport!

gregoc

I heard the demo was cancelled due to security concerns.

IronMike

@gregoc, close but no cigar. The event was cancelled due to the water being too warm.

Seriously though, last I was in that region, water was way warm this time of year and icky (that's an official description of all "open water" in Russia, btw).

IronMike

They did a whole 100m in the Amur, which is over in Far East Russia on the border with China. Beautiful in the summer in Khabarovsk, the bars set up their tables and chairs on the boardwalk. Too cold in the winter.

Leonard_Jansen

Ice swimming did get mentioned during a telecast from Sochi. During the 50 km XC ski event, one of the announcers said something about the Finnish Skiier, Lehtonen (finished 23rd place, although he did lead for awhile), like: "Well, he must like pain, just look at his hobbies - fishing, ok that's pretty normal, and ice swimming, not so normal. You have to be crazy to do that."

-LBJ

Mike_Gemelli

I didn't see anything mentioned about swimming, but I thought it was pretty cool to see Julia Mancuso surfing in the Black Sea:
http://www.cbssports.com/olympics/eye-on-olympics/24448305/usa-skier-julia-mancuso-takes-a-surf-in-the-black-sea-at-olympics