Introducing the WOWSA Awards

We’re proud to announce that Outdoor Swimmer is partnering with the World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) to bring the WOWSA Awards to our pages and platform

One hundred years since the ticker tape

On 6 August 1926, a 19-year-old from New York walked out of the sea on the Kent coast having just done something no woman, and almost no man, had done before. Gertrude Ederle had swum the English Channel in 14 hours 31 minutes, nearly two hours faster than any of the five men who’d managed it before her. The experts had said her unconventional eight-beat crawl kick would never hold up over that distance. Trudy proved them wrong in the water that has humbled swimmers for over a century.

New York gave her the biggest ticker tape parade the city had ever thrown. A hundred years on, we think it’s time for another one.

We’re proud to announce that Outdoor Swimmer is partnering with the World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) to bring the WOWSA Awards to our pages and platform, and to mark the occasion, this year’s cycle honours Trudy Ederle herself as 2026 Legacy Honoree, exactly a century after her Channel crossing.

Why this partnership matters

WOWSA has spent over a decade doing the quiet, essential work of open water swimming: setting safety standards, maintaining the sport’s records, and running the Awards with real institutional rigour. We’ve spent that same decade doing what we do best: telling the stories of the swimmers who make this sport what it is, for a community that shows up for open water because of what it gives back, health, headspace, adventure, belonging.

WOWSA owns the Awards. We’re building the stage. Between us, nominees from 24 countries and every discipline in the sport get the audience their achievements deserve, readers who understand exactly what it takes to do what these athletes do, because in smaller ways, out in cold water at dawn, many of us are doing it too.

As Simon Griffiths and Quinn Fitzgerald put it: “The WOWSA Awards are our ticker tape parade, and we’re thrilled to share it with you.”

How the WOWSA Awards work

Nothing about the WOWSA Awards is casual. Nominations pass through an independent Advisory Board, the global community votes publicly, a Voting Academy of past winners and finalists casts weighted ballots, and the WOWSA Board ratifies every result. It’s a process built, like the sport itself, on integrity as much as ambition.

Get involved

These are athletes who push at boundaries most of us can only watch from the shore. Nominations open at outdoorswimmer.com in September 2026, so start thinking now about who in your open water world deserves to be recognised.

Trudy Ederle once swam further and faster than anyone thought possible. A hundred years later, we’re still finding people who do the same.

Find out more at openwaterswimming.com