Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California.

The vortex just keeps spinning in the open water swimming world.

Once one or two open water swimming events are established in a local area, it seems that the community just starts to keep growing larger and larger.

Once Doug Woodring started a few events in Hong Kong, like the Sheko Challenge and the Clean Half Extreme Marathon Swim, then his events started to become more numerous and more popular. Sheko Challenge and the Clean Half led to the Cold Half, The Five, the Cold Standard, Kids Ocean Day, Hong Kong / San Francisco Ocean Film Festival, and The Ocean Walk.

But then English Channel soloists like Simon Holliday started to get involved and there are additional spin-offs – all of which help make the local open water swimming community more vibrant and varied.



Holliday and his colleagues have just established Splash, a learn-to-swim school for foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong (see here). “It’s not great being a domestic helper [in Hong Kong], so hopefully this [effort] improves a few people’s lives a little.”



Additionally, Holliday has teamed up with Andrew O’Regan and Lawrence Webb to form Swim In Asia, a Hong Kong-based swimming holiday company with a number of 3-day, 5-day, and bespoke open water swimming tours in and around Hong Kong.

For more information, visit www.swiminasia.com, part of a growing ecosystem of open water swim offerings in Hong Kong.

Copyright © 2015 by World Open Water Swimming Association