How Dangerous is Open Water Swimming?

People often ask this question. Lately it seems to arise in the context of the swim leg of a triathlon, or the new USMS sanctioning insurance requirements. So how does the USMS insurance carrier view it? Here are 2 things which are specifically not covered by the USMS insurance policy:
1) Competitive Water polo
2) Underwater sports activities, including Synchronized swimming
So when it comes to risk, OWS is safer than Synchronized Swimming.
http://www.usms.org/admin/lmschb/gto_ins_general.pdf
1) Competitive Water polo
2) Underwater sports activities, including Synchronized swimming
So when it comes to risk, OWS is safer than Synchronized Swimming.
http://www.usms.org/admin/lmschb/gto_ins_general.pdf
Comments
Water Polo, I'm not as sure of, but I can see why an insurance company would view it as riskier. Water Polo is very much a contact sport, some intentional, some incidental. Some of the incidental contact can be relatively violent. I've been elbowed in the side of the head sprinting for a ball, the contact happens.
Evan had a good post on his blog, and I tend to agree, a lot of the risk in open water comes from lack of preparation on the part of the athletes. In my opinion, a smaller portion of that risk comes from lack of training/experience on the part of the support of the swim. The video from Escape from Alcatraz highlights this pretty well, in my opinion. The paddleboarders didn't have a way to really assist distressed swimmers (poor planning by race director), the swimmers weren't ready for the cold, rough water (poor prep by athletes), no one seemed to be able(?) willing(?) to help the paddleboarder indicating they had a problem (what was this person taking the video supposed to be doing, anyway?) As you mentioned in the other thread, encouraging race directors to use less trained volunteers to support the race is a poor practice, and will not do anything to make our sport safer.
I understand things happen. While we hope to never need insurance, it is a necessary evil.
I'm just rambling now, I'll stop.
Would USA Swimming's insurance bear any of the brunt of that? It was a FINA sanctioned event on another continent, I would think whoever covers either FINA or swimming in Dubai would be the primary insurer in a case like that.
Anybody know what the deal is in a situation like that?
http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/USA/32329.asp
I don't think that the USMS insurance policy even covered the boating disaster for the Maui Channel event. According to this post from @trouble, boat vs. swimmer accidents were never covered in the policy. [url="http://www.marathonswimmers.org/forum/discussion/329/usms-ow-sanctioning/p3: "]http://www.marathonswimmers.org/forum/discussion/329/usms-ow-sanctioning/p3: [/url]
Here's my best guess as to what happened: One of the two other "mystery claims" was a really big deal. That claim caused USMS's rates to go up. While reviewing the USMS relationship in light of the Mystery Claim, the insurer realized what a cluster the Maui Channel swim was and decided they didn't want anything to do with open water.
Unless I misunderstand @trouble's post, I don't see how the USMS insurer could have had any liability for the Maui Channel incident.
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