WOWSA Awards – World Open Water Swimming Offering Of The Year

Sponsored by KAATSU Global, Huntington Beach, California.

The WOWSA Awards are sponsored by the World Open Water Swimming Association and serve as an annual public recognition of the world’s finest open water swimming products, services or organizations in four categories via a global online poll. The categories include:

* World Open Water Swimming Man of the Year
* World Open Water Swimming Woman of the Year
* World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year
* World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year

Over the history of the WOWSA Awards, the following individuals were selected for the annual Offering of the Year:

2012 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year: SWIM Channel, produced by Patrick Winkler of Brazil

2013 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year: International Ice Swimming Association, founded by Ram Barkai of South Africa

2014 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year: Step Out Of The Ordinary Blue Letter Campaign by Pádraig Mallon and Camlough Lake Water Festival in Ireland

2015 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year: World Ice Swimming Championships in Murmansk, Russia by the International Ice Swimming Association

2016 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year: Samsung Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swim event in Turkey

2017 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year: Sea Donkeya film by James Harrison with Adrian Sarchet in Guernsey

2018 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year: Icebears Hintertux by Josef Köberl of Austria

2019 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year: Travesía Interminable by Antonio Argüelles of Mexico and Adam Skolnick of the USA

The 2019 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year Travesía Interminable (or The Forever Swim) is an example of the purpose of the WOWSA Awards:

The World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year is meant to identify unique products, services, events and organizations that:

(1) best support and assist open water swimmers achieve their goals
(2) are innovative, unique and beneficial to open water swimmers, race directors, coaches or administrators
(3) have made the most positive impact on the world of open water swimming during the calendar year

Travesía Interminable was nominated with the following description:

Antonio Argüelles and Adam Skolnick’s Travesía Interminable won the 2019 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year Award. Its nomination was as follows: His life reads like an adventure novel; his story could be made into a movie: a young charismatic boy from Mexico with an entrepreneurial talent finds his way to the halls of Stanford University in search of going to the Olympics. But his aquatic dreams are put on hold – temporarily – as he ventures out in the world and eventually finds success back to Mexico. His book, Travesía Interminable, or The Forever Swim in English, was written by Antonio Argüelles about his fascinating experiences en route to achieving the Oceans Seven at the age of 58. The 312-page book, co-authored by Adam Skolnick, describes his successes and the largely unseen obstacles that he had to overcome. For sharing his inner thoughts, worries and challenges, for describing his colorful, relentlessly goal-setting life, and for becoming the oldest man to achieve the Oceans Seven, the book Travesía Interminable by Antonio Argüelles and Adam Skolnick is a worthy nominee for the 2019 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year.

To nominate a worthy candidate for the 2020 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year, send an explanatory email to WOWSA Awards Nominations here.

For more information on the WOWSA Awards, visit here.

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