Good timing for sea swim
Participants at the 2016 Flowers Sea Swim
(CNS Local Life): For the first time in its 25-year history, the annual Flowers Sea Swim, which takes place Saturday, 10 June, will be using a professional electronic timing system to track the results. The system will be powered by Flow, which is a platinum sponsor of the event for a second year.
Using Flow’s mobile internet service, swimmers will be tagged at the start of the race and clocked at the check point at the finish to provide live accurate results of each participant’s performance.
International swimming body for the Western Hemisphere Union Americana Natacion (UANA), has officially recognised the Flowers Sea Swim for the first time this year and organisers will also be hosting a UANA Open Water Swimming Championships series over the same weekend.
Delegations are expected from North, South and Central America. The new timing system is one of the requirements of both UANA and the Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA). US-based Regatta Timing will provide the timing installation and racing event management software, which includes organising and managing the results of both the Flowers Sea Swim and the Championship Series.
Using a custom-designed system, it will push the swimmer results in real-time to Regatta Timing’s website. The company has timed every open-water national for USA Swimming since 2007 (three Olympic cycles) and the 2010 World Championships.
“We had a fairly simple timing system for the past 24 years,” said Sea Swim founder, Frank Flowers Sr. “We were using a digital stop clock with a tape printer, and matching the times with finish order data collected by the finish line judges.
“The introduction of this new timing system definitely raises the bar. Every year we try to enhance the event, and this new, sophisticated timing system will deliver faster, even more accurate results for our swimmers, and hopefully attract more participants to the beach this weekend.”
Flow managing director Victor Salgado said of the event, “Flow is pleased to be a part of the Flowers Sea Swim as it celebrates its silver anniversary. This event has grown from humble beginnings to become one of the world’s top 13 open-water swims, and we congratulate Frank, Dara and the rest of the team on their amazing accomplishment.”
He added, “We look forward to working with Frank and Dara to put together a product that will showcase the Flowers Sea Swim and Cayman at its very best.”
The Flowers Sea Swim is known as the “richest” open-water event in the world, offering more than $100,000 in cash and prizes and attracting more than 1000 registrants from novices and first-timers to gold medal Olympians and world championship open-water specialists..
The regional Flow Sports network will also be in Cayman to cover the sea swim, which will be broadcast across the Caribbean at a later date and available on Flow TV On Demand. The telecoms provider will also be donating Samsung smartphones and tablets as prizes.
For more information, go to the Flowers Sea Swim website
