As promised in my last post I’ll be profiling my support team who will be assisting me during my Bridging the Cayman Islands swim in June 2011. Whilst this is a solo swim attempt I always consider my swims to be a team effort. I rely upon my team for support, feeds, information and to keep me safe throughout the swim. They will be watching every stroke I take and everything I do for 40 or so hours, day and night.
Steven Munatones, is one of, if not the most experienced and knowledgeable people in the world of open water swimming.
- Steven Munatones has served as a coach, administrator, writer, race director, athlete, volunteer, kayaker, paddler, official, observer and advisor in the sport of open water swimming.
- He was the USA Swimming National Open Water Swimming Team coach at the 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2007 World Swimming Championships and 2006, 2007 and 2009 national team camps.
- He has written several cover stories and several dozens of articles for Swimming World Magazine, U.S. Masters Swimming SWIMMER Magazine and Competitor Magazine. He is an International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame inductee, board member and Chief Administrator. He created and manages the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame website. He is a member of the FINA Technical Open Water Swimming Committee and USA Swimming Open Water Swimming Committee where he drafted rules, guidelines, protocols and regulations currently used in the sport. He was the 1982 World Long Distance Swimming Champion (25K in Lake Windermere, England), did five unprecedented solo swims over 30K in Asia and several professional marathon swims in Canada, Mexico and Atlantic City. He was the NBC Olympics’ Commentator for the 2008 Olympic 10K Marathon Swim in Beijing. He created the Open Water Swimming Dictionary, World’s Top 100 Open Water Swims, America’s Top 50 Open Water Swims, the World Open Water Swimming Man of the Year, the World Open Water Swimming Woman of the Year, the World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year, Open Water Wednesday, the Pyramid of Open Water Success, Ocean’s Seven, the Half Century Club, the World Record List and the Open Water Almanac. He has prepared open water swimming materials used by NBC, USA Swimming, Beijing Olympic Committee, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, National Public Radio and National Geographic Magazine. He serves as the Technical Delegate for the Special Olympics and 2011 World Games and as an adviser to race directors in the USA from California to New York, Brazil, Cayman Islands, Fiji, Greece, Mexico and Japan.
- He is a member of the board of directors of Swim Free and was the race director for the Waikiki Roughwater Swim, USA Swimming National Open Water Swimming Championships, the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships 10K and the Distance Swim Challenge.
- He wrote the script for
- Out of the Box, USA Swimming’s 90-minute educational DVD on open water swimming, and The Tactics and Techniques of Open Water Swimmers
- . He has kayaked, paddled, escorted and coached several swimmers in numerous channels and lakes around the world including the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Caribbean Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Sea of Japan, South Pacific and the Hawaiian Islands. He created the Waikiki Roughwater Swim Clinics and conducted numerous other clinics for swimmers and triathletes as well as created Certification Programs for coaches, administrators and referees. He created The Daily News of Open Water Swimming, the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame website, 10Kswim, Virtual Swim, Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming, Open Water Source, Water Polo Hair and SwiMetrics. He is a contributing writer to The Science of Swimming and is an adviser to the American Swimming Coaches Association’s Journal of Swimming Research. He wrote
- Open Water Swimming
- , a comprehensive tome on open water swimming that will be published in 2011 by Human Kinetics. He received the Irving Davids / Captain Roger Wheeler Award from the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the Glen S. Hummer Award and two Open Water Swimming Committee awards from USA Swimming. He advises U.S. Masters Swimming on open water swimming and jointly developed the Open Water Swimming Safety Conference together with U.S. Masters Swimming. He created and hosted the first Global Open Water Swimming Conference and has plans for Global Conferences in New York, London, Sydney and San Francisco.
- He was born and raised in Southern California, is a graduate of Harvard University, can speak, read and write Japanese, and currently resides in Huntington Beach, California with his wife and four children where he coaches, researches, writes and promotes open water swimming and water polo.
- He can be reached at headcoach@openwatersource.com
Bridge Swim Sponsors
- Cayman Airways http://www.caymanairways.com/
- Sunshine Suites Resort http://www.sunshinesuites.com/
- Cayman Islands Department of Tourism http://www.caymanislands.ky/
- Cayman Islands Ministry of Health, Environment, Youth, Sports & Culture http://www.gov.ky/portal/page?_pageid=1142,1594292&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
- Red Sail Sports http://www.redsail.com/en/index.html
- Esso http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esso
- Flowers Group http://www.flowersseaswim.com/BridgeSwim/tabid/204/Default.aspx
- Caymanian Compass http://www.compasscayman.com/
- Digicel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digicel
http://www.waikikiparc.com/ 
