Canceled USMS Open Water Swims
Is anyone else interested in keeping track of the canceled USMS open water swims in 2013?
It might be a good idea to keep track of those events.
A simple idea, and my suggestion, would be to just post them to this thread for all to see.
It might be a good idea to keep track of those events.
A simple idea, and my suggestion, would be to just post them to this thread for all to see.
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- Kingdom Swim (de-sanctioned by USMS, now sanctioned by WOWSA)
- Tampa Bay Marathon Swim (de-sanctioned by USMS)
I wondered, but when I contacted Sarasota, they responded relatively quickly. It seems they had discussed it among themselves, but forgot to answer the original inquirer.
I will say this, the new requirements have made things more complicated, even for my little race in a small sheltered puddle. I have a good working relationship with the owner of the facility, a water ski school (www.skibennetts.com). I run some training swims up there most Saturdays, and he lets us swim on his facility's insurance with a signature on a waiver. He has 3 boats in 2 of his 3 ponds all the time, and has people skiing in the ponds adjacent to where we swim most of the weeks we are up there. I trust him and his staff...
But because of the $1M insurance requirement, although he may actually be able to get the required paperwork completed, I don't even have the option of using his (inboard) on site watercraft, and instead, we have to have the local dive team folks (who thankfully I know the guy who trains them) being in their boat to have something on site in case something happens.
I could have gotten the inboards approved, but then the facility owner would have needed to provide a certificate saying he was covered for $1M. I'm not going to ask him to do that, so I'm going to plan around the requirements.
Future posters: Please spell out the conclusions so we don't have to search for it.
@Niek the reason LMSCs tend to not list events lacking a USMS sanction is that one of the key selling points of getting a sanction, at least in a big LMSC like SPMS or PacMasters, is the marketing bump you get from that. There's a real value in getting your event promoted to ~5,000 (SPMS) to ~11,000 swimmers (PacMasters). You can't expect an organization to waste marketing resources on non-sanctioned events that don't return any kind of value for the help. It's not censorship, it's just business.
But one might argue it is good marketing and PR to host a comprehensive, well-designed, useful OW calendar. Refusing to list non-sanctioned events makes it less comprehensive and (arguably) less useful.
Refusing to list non-sanctioned events (that compete with sanctioned events) makes the calendar less comprehensive and less useful.
But I also agree this thread should just list the actual races that fell victim. Right Bill?
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
I swam last year's race and am in for this spring's. He has a 5k in the fall that he didn't sanction through USMS so that it would be easier for folks to enter. His 10k last fall wasn't a USMS race, either. His decision was made before the procedural changes, so it isn't fair to credit this change to this thread.
I understand that. I didn't realize he had USMS sanctioning in the spring last year. He ran a 5k swim in the fall where he withdrew his sanction request, so that he could have the flexibility to allow triathletes and younger swimmers to enter (there is a very talented 14 or 15 year old girl who swims his races). This was before anyone, even in Sarasota, knew of the trouble that was brewing. He ran a 10k swim in November that was insured through an independant source, I didn't ask him which firm. Given what you've shown me, he's not insuring his race through USMS this spring, either. WIth the way he runs his races, he wouldn't have been able to comply with the new regulations even if he wanted to.
I understand what you are saying, but having spoken with the race director when I swam in these events, the decision to sanction outside of USMS was not made as a result of the decisions made in Sarasota.
Let's let race directors speak for themselves instead of trying to put words in their mouths.
I did the 1-mile race 3 years ago and I don't remember any powerboats on the lake, although that may be because I was overwhelmed, that being my first OW race. So, I don't know about the boat insurance requirement or the blade cover (or whatever it's called).
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
Propeller Guard
Ron Collins
Clearwater, Florida
DistanceMatters.com
8 Bridges Hudson River Swim; June 15 - 22, 2013
Bannermans Return, 5k and 10k options; Sept. 1, 2013
Are all good to go sans USMS
...anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
My BIG question to USMS is not just about the "big" swims. What about all of the smaller, shorter (dare I say, safer) swims? Do they matter? Where do they fit in to the bigger picture of the future of open water swimming?
SAD NEWS: The 2013 Huntington/Cold Spring Harbor (Long Island, NY) 1&2-Mile Swim (the "West Neck Swim") is CANCELLED. Because of recent horrific accidents at major open-water events, this year United States Masters Swimming ("USMS") has imposed prohibitively expensive insurance premiums that have substantially increased the costs of running charitable open-water events like ours. Swim organizers are informed that USMS has also apparently stopped issuing sanctions altogether for other than lake and/or cable swims that are relatively low-risk. These issues have impacted the Swim's ability to timely obtain the insurance certificate required to obtain the necessary permits from the Town of Huntington and have made it impossible to complete our organizational planning by June 23rd, and Swim organizers have reluctantly concluded that this year's Swim must be cancelled. Hopefully by the time we begin planning next year's West Neck Swim, USMS will have developed more workable guidelines and policies for open-water events, and we will be back with an even better "West Neck Swim" in 2014!
"Due to the giant leap in the USMS event liability insurance
premium and the change in the sanction requirements
(see the article that I wrote on this topic in the April Aqua
Master), several Oregon swims will be held outside the
USMS umbrella on a non-sanctioned basis. This does not
diminish these events; it just means that they are using
separate insurance to cover the event, with some resulting
changes in operation.
2. All USMS-sanctioned events will carry a required insurance
surcharge of $6 for each swimmer entered at a venue. This
will cover part of the event liability insurance increase, and
OMS will graciously pick up the remaining portion.