Swimathon 2020

I had been hoping to take part in Swimathon 2020 a week tomorrow, but nobody will be surprised to learn that the event has sadly had to be postponed for public health reasons due to Coronavirus.

The following announcement was made by the Swimathon Chair Anthony Kendall on 16th March:


Dear Swimathon community,

It is with great disappointment that I write to inform you that we have decided to postpone the Swimathon 2020 event weekend until later in the year.

This decision is not taken lightly and we do appreciate that this may be a disappointment after all of your training and preparation for the event when, at the time of writing, the UK Government and Public Health Authorities have not advised that pools should close as a result of coronavirus.

However, out of an abundance of caution in the context of concerns about the impact of COVID-19 we feel that our responsibility to you all - our swimmers, pools, partners and staff - must now be to postpone staging all those local events at our Swimathon pools that comprise our Swimathon 2020 event weekend.

Swimathon has been around for 34 years now and it will take rather more than this to stop us!

We are actively exploring options for our local Swimathon events to take place later in the year and we will be in contact with you as soon as possible, once we have consulted fully with our partners.

For those of you that are still keen to take on an individual swimming challenge, we have now extended the availability of MySwimathon (where individual swimmers can take on their challenge at a pool and time of their choice and not as part of the Swimathon 2020 event weekend) until the end of October.

We must recommend that in deciding whether to take on a MySwimathon challenge you closely follow UK Government and Public Health Authority advice on coronavirus. For anyone who would like to switch their entry over to a MySwimathon entry then you can make this switch via your log in area.

Please email info@swimathon.org if you need any help with this.

For those of our swimmers who have already completed MySwimathon challenges, we will continue to send out medals to you if you have posted a result through your MySwimathon log in area.

I am aware of the tremendous fundraising efforts of our swimmers and this year has been no exception.

Please do continue to support Swimathon and our wonderful charity partners Cancer Research UK and Marie Curie. Your support makes a very real difference to people’s lives.

Thank you for your understanding and I wish all of you the very best of health.

Anthony Kendall OBE
Swimathon Chair


I have been taking part in Swimathon since about 1994 so this is a grave disappointment: I will find a way to participate in some form of Swimathon this year.

In the meantime my Swimathon 2020 fundraising page is still open to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care and Cancer Research UK and you can find it at

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chris-whiteside2020.

Comments

Anonymous said…
What's wrong with swimming in the sea?
11:15 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Depends whether there are safety issues with tides and currents where you live, but that is hardly the point.

Swimathon 2020 is a mass sporting event, which was due to take place in 600 swimming pools and it would not have been safe to continue with it next weekend given the current situation with COVID-19.
6:58 pm
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