Swimming on the Box

I've been meaning for a while now to post something about recent(ish) swimming-themed TV programmes, but what with catching up after Christmas, New Year and all the rest I've been somewhat distracted until now.

Anyways: I love swimming, but ordinarily I find that watching things like Olympic swimming on the telly is just about the most boring thing ever. With competitive swimming it's almost as if the participants are in a rush to finish and get out of the water - whereas I sometimes think I'd like to stay in the water and swim around all day.

So it was interesting to see a few shows at the end of last year which seemed more relevant to my experiences as a recreational swimmer. The first was back at the end of November, with the BBC documentary "Virgin Swimmers" (part of the "Wonderland" series). This followed a disparate group of adults as they took a course of weekly swimming lessons together, and reminded me a little of similar classes that I took a few years ago. The people in the programme were just regular folk, but what was fascinating was how learning swim often seemed emblematic of a deeper need to take on a challenge and prove something to themselves. Somehow it's not just about learning to swim.

I suppose that people do all sorts of things - like, I don't know, rock climbing or hang-gliding - to challenge themselves in a similar fashion, and perhaps the "challenge" of swimming in a pool at a local community centre seems quite mundane. But what this programme brought out was that for the people that do it, it can be just as much of a challenge - and an achievement - as climbing a mountain.

The second programme was the two-parter "Robson Green's Wild Swimming Adventure", shown on ITV in December (certainly an odd time of year for a show about the joys of swimming outdoors). When I first heard about this, I'll admit I was a little sceptical and wondered if it was just an attempt to capitalise on the resurgence of interest in outdoor swimming here in the UK.

In the event, in spite of some contrived sequences (I'm wasn't entirely convinced by either the opening scene - when he's rescued from his swim in the freezing waters of the river Tyne in Newcastle - or the closing one, when he swims with his young son in the sea) Robson Green actually turns out to be a very engaging, humorous and enthusiastic host with a genuine love for swimming. He swims in various extremely pleasant locations and has interesting conversations with the various characters he meets there, but ultimately the focus becomes his desire to attempt a swim to Holy Island (off the coast of Northumberland) in memory of his late father.

As a result his outdoor swims leading up to this get tougher - including swims in a freezing Snowdonian lake with environmentalist and extreme cold water swimmer Lewis Gordon Pugh, and across the infamous Corryvreckan whirlpool (which nearly did for George Orwell). Outdoor swimming seems to have been rebranded as "wild swimming", when it's usually nothing of the sort - but these swims were truly wild. So by the end I was completely convinced by his commitment to experience all the highs and lows that outdoor swimming could throw at him. Monumental.

Staying on the outdoor theme, the last set of programmes was Channel 4's "Great Swim" series, which covered the "Great Swim" events that took place at the end of last summer in London, Strathclyde, Windermere and Suffolk. Each one featured races between professional swimmers, however the main focus were the mass participation events where basically anyone could take part and swim a mile. Following my own outdoor swimming adventures last summer (nothing wild about those at all), I would really have liked to have taken part in one of these mass swims but it didn't work out; at least through these programmes I was able to watch some other regular folk swimming and talking about their motivations and experiences.

So... here's to some great swimming in 2010!