Nika Kozamernik, a professional marathon swimmer from Slovenia who is currently hurt due to a complicated shoulder operation. During her rehabilitation over the next year, the personable multi-lingual swimmer will be in Switzerland to work with Swiss Swimming Federation on open water swimming.

Open water swimming in Switzerland, like everywhere else in the world, is becoming popular among Swiss athletes.

But in Switzerland, even at high altitudes, there is a mega-twist due to the oopularity of Gigathlon.

Gigathlon is an endurance sport discipline, started in 2002, that has been growing ever since. The adventure sport includes open water swimming, running, cycling, biking and inline skating. The competition lasts 7 days and all the sports are performed every day. There are some athletes that are doing the entire gigathlon solo and there are also teams and duos with approximately 8,000 athletes at the start.

The open water swimming is in the lake or river with the swimming distance each day about 3 km in a lake or 9 km in a river.

“Besides the popularity of triathlons in Switzerland, that is why there is a huge interest in training for open water swimming,” says Kozamernik. “The Swiss Swimming Federation is organising various open water swimming days and training sessions in June that I am going to help them with for the gigathlon. There are about 80-150 athletes participating at each of those training sessions, mostly because they are interested in learning how to swim in rivers and lakes.”

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