The survey
Results are In
Welcome to the first ever Open Water Magazine, Open Water Swimmers Survey. Firstly, I would personally like to thank everyone that took part in the survey and although a majority of the swimmers surveyed have been from either Australia or New Zealand, we hope to get another survey out soon to get a larger number from all over the world.
The survey was designed as a quick Q&A to open water swimmers for us to get to know them a little better and help the magazine tailor some of its content to what is on the mind of the readers. We asked a series of ten questions from how long they have been interested in open water swimming, to their favourite brand of wetsuit, to their dream open water swimming destination.
A majority of the swimmers surveyed have been swimming for longer than 6 years, which indicates that the lure of the open water is obviously something that comes with confidence and experience in the pool. The results also show that open water swimming is something that they take on after swimming in the pool for a while.We were surprised to see responses of affiliations to swimming clubs and groups. We thought that there would be almost 100% of swimmers who were members of a swim group, club or triathlon team, but this was just over 80%.
We weren't surprised that looking good in black rubber did not poll by any of the swimmers surveyed as a motivation to get into open water swimming. Almost 40% of swimmers did respond that the main reason they enjoy open water swimming is because they love the adventure that swimming in open water brings them. Keeping fit and health and spending time outdoors also had a lot of responses between them.
As far as wetsuits are concerned, the top brand at the moment is Orca with blueseventy close behind. Others to mention that polled strongly were also 2XU and Rocket Science. The interesting thing to see is that 10% of the swimmers surveyed saw themselves as non wetsuit swimmers, opting to go without a wetsuit.
Dream open water swimming destinations are spread throughout the world. Although a large majority of swimmers preferred warmer climates with no sharks or jellyfish, there was still some swimmers wanting to tackle the English Channel and even someone wanting to swim in Antarctic waters. Destinations included The Whitsunday Islands, the Rottnest Island Channel Swim, Fiji, Vanuatu, The Mediterranean, San Francisco(Alcatraz), Spain, the Isle of Capri, Bora Bora, Hawaii and the Caribbean.
So what stops you from swimming in open water? Almost two thirds of the swimmers surveyed responded that distance to travel, not wanting to swim alone and fear of creatures, including mutant jellyfish as putting people off going for a swim in open water. One thing that we didn't think of was time, with some people mentioning this as being a possible factor, and we will make sure we include this next time we hold the survey.
The survey was a surprising insight. We were limited a little with time with both creating the survey and gathering responses, but hopefully future surveys will give an even clearer insight into what is on the minds of swimmers around the world.
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