Rotary Global Swimarathon
The Rotary Club of Grantham have held a local community event for the past 22 years at our local pool Grantham Meres Leisure Centre over a long 3 day weekend in February- we get teams of 6 to 8 people to use a lane for an hour and collect sponsorship from friends and family. 90% of all the proceeds go to local charities and the remaining amount to Rotary Foundation and End Polio now /Polio Plus campaigns. It's a fantastic community event, with over 1400 participants , more than 200 teams, a great number coming from local schools , and local swimming clubs, and 60% under 16. Last year alone we raised nearly £50,000, and over the 22 years we've raised in excess of £500,000.
Right back at the original event in 1990 we were priviledged to have members of the British Paralympic swimming team complete a 24 hour swimming marathon for us, and our own Grantham based Lynx Disability swimming club have always been strong supporters. As you are no doubt aware 2012 is Olympic year, our swimarathon chairman has challenged us to think globally - and so we've come up with the RotaryGlobalSwimarathon on Saturday 25th February with the idea of getting as many Rotary Clubs and friends around the world to run a one hour swimming event at 12pm - 1pm G.M.T aiming to set a brand new Guinness world record in the process.
To count for the record, each person only needs to be able to swim 100metres. As our target is to get 500 clubs /groups and 50 swimmers per group to take part (as the current record is 2332 people) with a target of 25,000 plus swimmers we really hope to break that record. Don't forget, there's absolutely no requirement for swimmers to be Rotarians, so it's a great chance to make contacts with local schools and community clubs and groups who will no doubt be more than happy to have the chance to become a world record breaker. The biggest challenge has always been how to get in contact with other clubs around the world. However, thanks to an innovative Social Media campaign and the brilliant work of Rotarians around the world ,the event has rapidly gained widespread attention and support on a global scale.
