Swimmers from all over the world are in the island this week for the 8th Barbados Open Water Festival, swimmers from New Zealand, Wales, England, Ireland, South Africa, Spain, USA, Canada, Germany, Trinidad and St Lucia and almost two hundred local swimmers are entered for the swim races in Carlisle Bay over the weekend.

Three large Canadian contingents will swim on the weekend. Mark Perry, Swimming Canada's National Open Water Coach, has brought a group of 24 competitive open water swimmers who hail from all across Canada to train in Barbados and swim the Festival. Katie Brambley, a Canadian Olympian, is back for her fourth time with a group of 36 swimmers known as the Freestyle Experience. Appleby College of Ontario will take part for the first time with 21 of their students entered for the 3.3K swim on Sunday.

Barbadian swimmer, Nkosi Dunwoody, won the marathon 10K swim last year at the Festival and will be back to defend his title this Sunday. Other Barbadian competitive swimmers who will be in action include: Diego Dulieu, McCallum Clarke, Amelie & Heidi Baker, Che and Keilani Talma, Christopher Pollard, Eric Lashley, Rylan Marville and Heidi Stoute. Additionally, Barbadian group: Saltwater Swimmers have entered almost one hundred swimmers in various races.

There are two very special guests at the Festival this year: American Jaimie Monahan is a renowned ultra-marathon and ice swimmer and South African Cameron Bellamy, who recently swam 151K swim from Barbados to St Lucia.

Races start Saturday morning at 9:00am (1.5K) and Sunday morning at 7:00am (10K) and 9:00am (3.3K and 5K). There is also a Fun Swim on Saturday morning in support of the Variety Club.

Marquest Clake-Griffith Chefette’s Marketing Officer said “ Chefette is happy to be sponsoring such an exciting and thrilling event. Being active should be an integral part of a person’s life and we encourage everyone to join some type of activity that brings some form of exercise to their day to day living”.