World’s Largest Swim Lesson Results Are Released

Posted by: Jessica Boyer in Santa Clarita News September 1, 2013 - 12:28 pm 0 197 Views

On June 18, 2013, the Academy Swim Club officials in Valencia participated in the World’s Largest Swim Lesson event in hopes of breaking a Guinness World Record.

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Officials of Team World’s Largest Swim Lesson released the results on Thursday.

“We are delighted to announce that Team WLSL successfully achieved a new GUINNESS WORLD RECORD for the largest simultaneous swimming lesson,” said Team World’s Largest Swim Lesson officials.

The event has been occurring annually for the past four years with nine countries participating in 2012.

“We had 32,450 participants hosted by 432 facilities in 13 countries,” officials said.“This is a 30% increase over last year’s record of 24,873 participants.”

The event was created to help teach children about water safety in hopes to prevent drownings.

“The whole event was put together for water safety because drowning is the leading cause of death for children 5 and under in the state of California, and children 14 and under worldwide,” said Nikki Miller, president of Academy Swim Club.

Some swimming techniques taught to the kids include floating on their back, swimming to the bottom of the pool to retrieve a diving ring, kicking, swimming out to the instructor and practicing holding their breath underwater.

“Go ahead, pat yourself on the back. Then, mark your calendars for next year’s date of Friday, June 20th, 2014,” officials said. “We are going to make our fifth attempt our best ever, so make your plans to join us again in 2014.”