Are Open Water events more popular than Pool events?

Has open water swimming officially passed pool swimming in popularity? No. We are just more exuberant. :bliss:

Has open water swimming officially passed pool swimming in popularity? It might be in terms of number of events. I think the overlap with the tri community increases the attendance at OW events. Plus, OW events are much easier to incorporate into your life as they generally consume half a day at most versus a 2 or 3 day pool meet. Also, take the USMS calendar with a grain of salt, though, as not all events (pool or otherwise) are always listed there.

I noticed the same thing here in the PNS zone. I live in Washington and the only two LCM meets this summer were in Oregon. Unfortunately I couldn’t make either of these meets. There are several open water events, but I’m not much of an open water swimmer, at least not yet. I had to swim a US Swimming meet to get some times for this summer. I may register for PNS through US Swimming instead of Masters just because of the availability of meets.

In my region, yes. There are so many swimmers that I know that only do Open Waters. You never see these people at a swim meet.

Plus, OW events are much easier to incorporate into your life as they generally consume half a day at most versus a 2 or 3 day pool meet. Not to mention you get free food at the finish!

Based on the amount of LCM meets the Dixie Zone had within driving distance of me I said "screw it" and did nothing BUT OW events this summer. The LCM season for Master's is almost nonexistent here it would seem. So I'm not gonna waste my time on it. I like the OW events better anyway and it gets you into the "great outdoors". That is why I did age group meets. You can get good competition without having to drive two hours or more to get to. We had one local LCM Masters meet but the pool is pretty bad for competition. It is fine for training because it is LCM.

Based on the amount of LCM meets the Dixie Zone had within driving distance of me I said "screw it" and did nothing BUT OW events this summer. The LCM season for Master's is almost nonexistent here it would seem. So I'm not gonna waste my time on it. I like the OW events better anyway and it gets you into the "great outdoors".

I'd really like to know the answer to this one. I do know this is true as I've had to search LMSC websites (which are not always intuitive to find or navigate) to find meets to travel to that didn't appear on the USMS website. I generally have a limited number of weekends when I can get a meet in, but am willing to travel to do so. It would be nice if all USMS sanctioned meets across the country were listed on the USMS calendar events, both pool and OW. I know in some cases, Meet Directors post to there Local LMSC sites and do not bother with the Calendar of Events. I think the thinking is they will have more swimmers locally and don't bother with filling out the necessary information to get the meet flyer posted on the site. I'm with Patrick on this, I see no reason not to send the information into the national database (it certainly can't HURT attendance, anyway). It doesn't even have to be the meet director, from what I recall; at least, I know I did it for one of the meets in Virginia. It was online and took something like 1 minute.

Paul is right that pool meets happen all year while OW events generally only happen in the summer. So it's not surprising that there are more OW events than pool events when only looking at the summer season. Also, there are by far fewer LCM pools to hold meets at so it's not surprising that there are few LCM meets. If you are going to compare pool meets to OW events, I think you need to look at in on an full-year basis, and I bet that most Zones and LMSCs still have more pool meets during a year than OW events. Also, the question fails to take account for how many people attend the average pool meet and how many attend the average OW event. I bet more people go to pool meets than OW events by a significant margin here in the Pacific Masters LMSC. Finally, swim meets have multiple events, while there is usually 1-2 races at any OW event. A pool swimmer can do 5+races over a meet (more with relays). An OW swimmer needs 5 OW events to swim that many races.... OW swimming may be very popular among tris but I don't think that they go to many Masters sanctioned events (at least around here) due to the pesky requirement that they not wear wetsuits.

I'll be glad to go to OW events as soon as they have the 100 M BR as an OW event.