A Russian swimmer, 29-year-old Nikolai Svechnikov, has gone missing during an open-water race in Turkey. Nikolai reportedly failed to reach the final line of the 6.5km Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swim on Sunday night, which had more than 2800 athletes competing from 81 countries.
Organizers told the Russian state agency RIA Novosti he may have suffered fatigue, a cramp or been carried off by currents, while relatives insisted he was in good health and had trained for months. The Bosphorus is a natural strait in Turkey that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, dividing the city of Istanbul and forming the continental boundary between Europe and Asia.
Much chaos has ensued since. The swimmer’s friend has been quoted by RIA Novosti, as saying that the first stage of the search began only two hours after the end of the competition: “Nikolai arrived in Istanbul to participate in the swim. His wife wrote to me at 17:00 that Nikolai still had not arrived, no one took any action until 16:00, they started searching from that time.”
Nikolai Svechnikov’s wife has also reportedly flown out to Turkey to seek help from the Russian embassy. “The coast guard told me verbally: Be assured, all services are searching for Nikolai. I cried and begged them to show me video footage or a search point. They just took my number and repeated: ‘Don’t worry, we’re looking for him,’” a relative told RIA Novosti.
It’s been reported that other swimmers last saw Svechnikov mid-race. Russian media outlets have reported that Nikolai was seen in the broadcast of the competition at the start of the race. According to the official competition website, swimmers were given two hours to complete the course. Those who did not finish the race within that time frame were supposed to be picked up by the Turkish coast guard, it added.
The Russian state agency further reports that: “Nikolai Svechnikov’s relatives and friends claim that the athlete had no health complaints and was in excellent physical shape for the swim, for which he had been preparing for more than six months. The 29-year-old Russian has been swimming since childhood. It is possible that he could have had a leg cramp during the swim – Svechnikov had never participated in such competitions before and had never covered a distance of more than two kilometers in open water. At the moment, the organizers and rescuers are considering all possible versions of what happened. Among them, the most frequently mentioned possibility is that the athlete could have been carried away by the current”.
Another media outlet Russia Today has a quote from a friend about a chat they had a day before the event. “Of all people, Nikolay should have made it. We talked a day before he disappeared, I told him: ‘The main thing is that you finish.’ He answered me: ‘I’ll finish, what else would I do?!’” the friend recounted. Another friend has been quoted by RT about the dangers of Bosphorous waters. “One needs to understand the realities of the Bosphorus. It’s really a very large water space… There are crazy underwater currents there.”
© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
