Within 200 yards or 3-minutes into the swim, Richard Harley, was in trouble. The kayak staff and a rescue team which included a fellow competitor began assisting him almost right away. Within the hour he passed away
Richard Harley was not a slow swimmer either, the Brooklyn Bridge Swim demands that you qualify yourself with race times and so he did.
From Newsday:
More than 400 people registered for Saturday's event and 13 were turned away because they did not have proper documentation, Berger said.
This was the first time Harley had entered an NYC Swim event, Berger said. According to documents he provided, he had a personal best of 22:04 for a one-mile swim and had been recently certified in a pool in which he finished a 3,300-meter swim in 54 minutes - equivalent to 27 minutes a mile.
[Link]
6 comments:
A little more detail:
Marin Independent Journal article.
We are glad to know that the NYC folks are asking for(requiring) some form of documentation regarding qualifications for their open water swims. I think that the governing body of triathlon competition should take note of this so that they can conduct their events with a greater margin of safety. According to the Marin IJ article, Rich was an accomplished swimmer and met the criteria set by the organizers of the swim.
> Rich was an accomplished swimmer
> and met the criteria set by the
> organizers of the swim.
Wouldn't that argue for the irrelevancy of requiring qualifications?
Irrelevancy could only be determined by an actuary.
In other words, are experienced athletes dying at greater numbers than inexperienced athletes? What do the numbers say?
Many variables to consider.
And then again, sometimes bad things just happen. People get heart attacks in OW swims as they do at board meetings or watching the news. We hear more about the former than about the latter.
True,true.
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