janeowit's Journal: At least there weren't any sharks...

Open water swimming: one of the worst ideas for a competitive sport ever. Ever.

"I could hear girls screaming on the first lap when they got stung," said Larisa Ilchenkoh.

"Everyone was just beating each other up," Angela Maurer said. "I have never experienced such a race before. It was horrible."

Well..

[jawtheshark]

They did have a good incentive to swim fast ;-)

For those behind stupid work firewalls

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Here's a URL without that banned word "sports". [msn.com]

Sounds horrific- they're lucky those jellyfish were relatively benign or it sounds like nobody would have finished the race. Some forms of jellyfish toxin are as deadly as nerve gas.

Re:

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Some forms of jellyfish toxin are as deadly as nerve gas

Try some and report back on how well it works.

Flamebait

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Parade it around like it's the Holy Grail of Slashdot.

Now go find a job

More flamebait. *yawn*

Open Water Swimming

[bettiwettiwoo]

Ocean swims, albeit usually shorter, are really popular here in NSW (and, probably, in the rest of Australia as well). Throughout summer there seems to be at least one ocean swim race every weekend (I only know this as my husband's uncles partner is dead keen and does as many of them as he can). Ditto the 'Iron Man Races' triathlons where various forms of ocean swims make up at least one of the legs (sometimes there seems to be only swimming, sometimes 'surfboard paddling', and sometimes possibly both; I d

Next olypmic sport

[nizo]

Can't think of a good name, but anything where the athletes swim through a pool full of piranha would be a sport I would watch. :-)

Re:

[janeowit]

What about a swimming triathlon through painful sea creatures, with jelly fish, electric eels, and piranhas?

That would be certainly more popular than synchronized swimming.