Swimming Canada – Due to water temperatures caused by the recent hot weather at the Summer Universiade in Taipei, Swimming Canada has decided not to allow Canadian athletes to compete in the open water marathon swim.

The race was set to take place early Sunday morning (Saturday evening in Canadian time zones). While the event is well organized, with a quality safety plan, Swimming Canada was not able to satisfy all items on its Open Water Safety Checklist. This included an independent final temperature measurement that was outside the maximum allowable range of 31 degrees Celsius established by FINA.

“Safety is always my first concern, and it’s been the primary area of discussion since our arrival,” said Swimming Canada Distance/Open Water Coach Mark Perry.

“We have a very comprehensive Red-Amber-Green rated safety system that we use to assess all safety issues before making a decision on whether it’s safe for our athletes to compete. In this case, we feel the conditions warrant withdrawing from the race.”

“Safety is our main concern,” added Swimming Canada CEO Ahmed El-Awadi. “We support the decision of the staff to withdraw the athletes. The reality is you cannot control the weather and we are not willing to place our athletes at risk.”

 Nathan White

Senior manager, Communications, Swimming Canada

Gestionnaire supérieur des communications, Natation Canada 

t. +1 613-260-1348 x2002 | m. +1 613-866-7946 | nwhite@swimming.ca