Grounded swimmers rip into Masters Games organizers in Australia

Oct 17, 2009, 5:40 GMT

   Sydney - Ocean swimmers ripped into World Masters Games organizers Saturday after the 3-kilometre open water event in Sydney Harbour was cancelled moments before the gun was to fire.

   'Everybody was numbered up, capped up, told to warm up and then next thing they said it was cancelled,' Britain's Rob Steel, 52, told Australia's AAP news agency. 'I've swum in much colder temperatures than this back in England. It's a bit of health and safety gone mad.'

   With no 1,500-metres pool events, the ocean swim was the only long-distance swimming event on the programme and some among the 28,000 competitors in the nine-day sports festival had travelled half way around the world just for this moment.

   'The water temperature did not meet the minimum requirement of an average of 18 degrees and combined with the weather conditions (wind chill) it was not possible to safely run an open water swim,' organizers said in a statement.

'The main concern is for competitor safety, and the risk of hypothermia was too high to enable the swim to go ahead.'

   They said the water temperature had been measured at 13 degrees.

   New Zealander Steve Prescott, 55, voiced the anger of many.

   'It's crazy, people should be able to make their own decision. We're all bloody adults. We should have been given the choice to swim.'

   Prescott said that at the 2005 World Masters Games in Edmonton, Canada, the water was colder but the event had gone on.