Masters around the World

Thanks, Funny enough, I got two clients in the UK, one in Bristol the other in Wales. Both of these guys are under the impression that they can not compete as Master Swimmers. Based on your input, they should have at least given their federation a call to see? Thank you so much. I have one client in Croatia. If any one has an idea of how Master Programs are structured down there, it would be appreciated.

If you come from a Country other than US, Canada and Australia, I'd like to hear about you too. In Brazil we do have master swimming, although with quite less people than USA or Italy. We have a nationwide, FINA compilant organization which arranges 4 meets / year, and two of them are "long", 4 days with all possible events (except 1500 and 800, mutually exclusive). They get 400 to 800 swimmers per meet. And the local organizations, mostly scoped by state, who arranges their own independent meets. Here in São Paulo we have about 8 local events/year, and each gets 200 - 400 swimmers. For training, the ubiquitous YMCA (here is "ACM") was an option until some 8 years ago, when they dismantled their swimming teams for absolute noodlers rejoice. I was there at that time, and went to a club. The options now are some clubs and some specific gyms; they have good master swimming programs, coaches and master training hours. My club, for instance, has some 60 master swimmers (but only some 10 to 18 swim with me every work day from 19:00 to 21:00; the rest either swim at morning or in odd hours - or don't) If someone comes to Sao Paulo and wants to swim, the easiest route is to contact "competition" or "formula" gyms; they offer decent swimming pools. Regards, Ivan

Masters swimming is mostly organized everywhere in Europe being a discipline of national federations (Croatia do not know). If you want to know more about the English check: www.britishswimming.org/.../0,10853,5157-181908-199126-nav-list,00.html or the forum where someone from the Masters committee always answers your questions www.swimclub.co.uk/.../forumdisplay.php About Spain and Portugal can give you detailed info through the email if you ask…

Hi Im in the UK and find Masters swimming pretty well organised. Clubs of all sizes and grades have masters squads and there are galas, regionals and nationals to compete in. I'm pretty new to the scene but it seems to be what you make of it. I swim with an age group squad. I was the second master (read Dad for that) to get off the viewing gallery and back in the pool and now we 7 in just over six months. Like me many parents didn;t think oldies could swim but by getting in and doing it we've not got ourselves a good squad of late twenties to mid fifties.

Masters in Sweden might not be as large as the USMS but then again we are barely the size of Florida with just around 9 million people. But we just had our 29th short course masters nationals. and I would say it was a good turn out. the meet was direct finals, 4 sessions with 6 relays. we had 459 registered swimmers and 1877 starts, along with a social dinner on saturday evening with 340 from 68 clubs. during the course of the meet we had 3 WR, 12 ER, 30 Nordic Records and over 40 national records, all with out supersuits. our oldest swimmer was 93 and out youngest were the 21 yr old Pre-masters. we had 208 men and 104 women swim the 50 free. here is how the worlds, Euro and swedish nationals compare as far as frequency. Worlds1:a Tokyo (JPN) 12-16 juli 1986 2:a Brisbane (AUS) 14-18 oktober 1988 3:e Rio de Janeiro (BRA) 6-13 augusti 1990 4:e Indianapolis (USA) 25 juni-5 juli 1992 5:e Montreal (CAN) 4-10 juli 1994 6:e Sheffield (GBR) 22 juni-3 juli 1996 7:e Casablanca (MOR) 19-30 juni 1998 8:e München (GER) 29 juli-3 augusti 2000 9:e Christchurch (NZL) 24-31 mars 2002 10:e Riccione (ITA) 2-13 juni 2004 11:e Stanford University (USA) 3-10 augusti 2006 12:e Perth (AUS) 16-23 april 2008 EUROPEAN 1:a Blackpool (GBR) 16-20 september 1987 2:a Turku/Åbo (FIN) 30 augusti-3 september 1989 3:e Coventry (GBR) 4-8 september 1991 4:e Sindelfingen (GER) 9-12 september 1993 5:e Riccione (ITA) 6-10 september 1995 6:e Prag (CZE) 3-7 september 1997 7:e Innsbrück (AUT) 25-29 augusti 1999 8:e Palm (ESP) 3-7 juli 2001 9:e Millau (FRA) 26-31 augusti 2003 10:e Stockholm (SWE) 16-21 augusti 2005 11:e Kranj (SLO) 28augusti-2 september 2007 12:e Cadiz (ESP) 15-20 september 2009 Swedish short course nationals 1:a Stockholm, Eriksdal, LCM 15-17 juli 1982 2:a Falun, LCM 28-30 juli 1983 3:e Falun 28-29 april 1984 4:e Stockholm, Forsgrenska 15-17 mars 1985 5:e Ängelholm 25-27 april 1986 6:e Handen 24-26 april 1987 7:e Umeå 25-27 mars 1988 8:e Borlänge 16-16 april 1989 9:e Nacka 23-25 mars 1990 10:e Linköping 22-24 mars 1991 11:e Gävle 27-29 mars 1992 12:e Södertälje 26-28 mars 1993 13:e Stockholm, Eriksdal, LCM 22-24 april 1994 14:e Hudiksvall 31 mars-2 april 1995 15:e Uddevalla 22-24 mars 1996 16:e Södertälje 14-16 mars 1997 17:e Mölndal 20-22 mars 1998 18:e Västerås 19-21 mars 1999 19:e Hudiksvall 17-19 mars 2000 20:e Örebro 16-18 mars 2001 21:e Linköping 26-28 april 2002 22:a Täby 21-23 mars 2003 23:e Malmö 26-28 mars 2004 24:e Linköping 15-17 april 2005 25:e Haninge 24-26 mars 2006 26:e Helsingborg 23-25 mars 2007 27:e Linköping 7-9 mars 2008 28:e Söderhamn 20-22 mars 2009 29:e Växjö 19-21 mars 2010 (largest ever!!! my club hosted) we have had a 3km OW championships the last 4 yrs, this yr the worlds come to sweden, but there are plans now to implement a long course national championships starting 2011. there is a masters committee with 7 members, 4 work mostly with swimming, 1 diving, 1 waterpolo and 1 psychronized swimming. Here is a site (in english) to our 2010 nationals. www.vaxjosimsallskap.com/.../en.php

In Turkey, masters swimming is quite new. We have races organized by swimming federation. Number of attendants are around 150-200 only. There are masters teams but quite few (less than a dozen). Here is the official web address of the federation: www.tyf.gov.tr/ContentPage.aspx

Thanks, Funny enough, I got two clients in the UK, one in Bristol the other in Wales. Both of these guys are under the impression that they can not compete as Master Swimmers. Based on your input, they should have at least given their federation a call to see? Thank you so much. I have one client in Croatia. If any one has an idea of how Master Programs are structured down there, it would be appreciated. Im heading out to Croatia next week actually...Ill ask around and see if I can't dig anything up.

Thanks to all of you. I find your post very informative. Thank you very much. I'll wait for news about Croatia. This one is of a particular interest for me. Thumbs up to all other countries that made the effort of structuring a Master Swimmer's program.

Are results from these meets available to see ?

at the swedish site you can find results from the last 10+ meets simforbundet.se/.../Browse.jsp SM = swedish NM = Nordic EM = Euro VM = Worlds the results from 2010 SM is on my previous post but can also be seen here www.vaxjosimsallskap.com/.../resultatlistan.html