Triple Crown Swim Race Series returns

Big Island swimmers have reason to celebrate as after a two-year hiatus, the Triple Crown Open Water Swim Series returns to the beautiful Kona-Kohala Coast.

The Triple Crown will be featured as the Big Island’s premier open water swim series comprised of three one-mile events held one month apart — Anaehoomalu Splash on May 8, Hapuna Rough Water on June 12, and the Kamakahonu Swim slated for July 3.

Triple Crown series race director, Dave Gibson, who has been the head coach for the Kona Aquatic Masters and Age Group teams over the last year, said his motivation to bring back the Triple Crown race series was a “natural next step” in revitalizing what has always been an active swimming community.

In years past, the three events of the Triple Crown were organized by different race directors — Janet Higa-Miller with the Cinco de Mayo Splash, Mark Noetzel with the Hapuna Rough Water Swim, and the Kings Swim by Steve Borowski. This year, the swim series will be organized under one race director, Gibson, and a core group of volunteers.

“Steve (Borowski) is retired from most of his swimming activities and the other two races up north were looking for someone to take over as there’s a lot that goes into putting on these swim races,” said Gibson of his decision to take on the role as race director.

“It was a piece that people were missing. COVID was one thing, but there wasn’t a single group of people standing up saying hey, we will take all three races and run them. We’ve got Kona Aquatics running pretty well now and it’s a nonprofit. We thought this was something we could bring into the Kona Aquatics group and use its resources and volunteers to get it up and running for the community.

“My first year with Kona Aquatics was somewhat of a learning year of how to run the nonprofit cooperation, how to run a Masters team, an Age Group team and how to run it all during COVID. While we are still in a COVID environment, I feel we are running as smoothly as we can and I’m very happy of where we are at. So, it was time to think about what would be a natural next step.”

Gibson said Kona Aquatics Club, Inc., which is a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation, will be the host for all three swim races. In addition to securing an overall sponsor for the series, Gibson is also looking for sponsorship for each swim race.

“All proceeds from the race will be used for expenses associated with running the Triple Crown races,” he said. “Then whatever money we make from it we plan to put back into the West Hawaii swim community. We don’t have a specific plan right now but it can range from lifeguard needs along the coast, it could help with swim programs and lessons — just all the different needs a swim community has up and down the coast that typically struggle with funding.”

Gibson knows he has his work cut out for him. As a former collegiate All-American swimmer who also competed as a Masters swimmer for over 30 years and organized numerous meets and races over his career, putting on a swim series will be no cakewalk.

“It’s a lot of work,” Gibson chuckled. “I had race directed an open water swim on a lake in Illinois. A lake in Illinois is very different than three ocean swims in Hawaii. I’ve also run swim meets before and open water swims are about ten times as much work as a swim meet. So, I had to make sure that I had a group of people willing to help. Right now, I have a core group of seven people who are putting together all the details. Once we are ready to launch then we will expand as on race day, it will take a good number of people to put it on. It is critical that we have a core group to do it because it really can’t be done with just one or two people.”

While there will be no entry limitations placed on each swim race, based upon participation in years past, Gibson expects a turnout between 200 and 250 athletes for each event. Participants will also notice some modifications that adheres with current social distancing guidelines.

Swimmers will start the race in swim waves of 50 people with each wave separated by five-minutes. There will be no post-race awards ceremony but athletes will be able to return to the comforts of their home to view results online instead of waiting for organizers to post paper results. This will help to minimize crowding on the beach.

“For the first year, we had to throttle back our ideas a little bit as we would like to do a whole lot more, but for the first year we are concentrating on getting the races run properly,” Gibson said. “We really aren’t doing an after-race event. In the past there would be award ceremonies and also a little party afterwards for the participants as it was geared around the social aspect of it. So, we really had to cut that part out. What we’ve done was talk to people who have done running races and other competitions to find out how they were handling the post-race part of their events and we are modeling off of what they’ve done.”

Another modification was calendaring the races to occur on Sundays instead of Saturdays which would have conflicted with other events.

“Originally we planned to have these races on Saturdays,” he said. “But then we looked at the swim calendar for the kids that’s currently being developed and there happens to be swim meets on Saturdays. So, we moved the open water races to Sundays as our main target and goal for these open water swim races are the kids, and we are talking about 11 to 18-year-old kids.”

Gibson said his goal for this year is to get the swim series up and running, and for next, possibly adding more to the events.

“I just want to make sure that people know we are still coming out of COVID so we still have some limitations. While we are getting them started, it won’t be quite as big of an event as they were prior to COVID but we plan to get them back as quick as we can.”

Registration and information for the swim series will open on March 1st on the Triple Crown website: www.oceanswimhawaii.com. Anyone interested in being a Triple Crown race sponsor can email Dave Gibson at oceanswimhi@gmail.com.