The Liffey Swim

The Liffey Swim An Snámh na Life
The 2007 Liffey Swim passes the Dublin Boardwalk
Status	active
Frequency	annual
Location(s)	Dublin, Ireland
Inaugurated	1920
Activity	swimming

The Liffey Swim, currently titled the Jones Engineering Dublin City Liffey Swim, is an annual race in Dublin's main river, the Liffey, and is one of Ireland's most famous traditional sporting events. The race is managed by a voluntary not-for-profit organisation, Leinster Open Sea. The 100th Liffey Swim over a 2.2 km course took place on Saturday 3 August 2019, starting at the Rory O’More Bridge (Watling Street Bridge) beside the Guinness Brewery and finishing at North Wall Quay in front of the Customs House.

The race is one of the last swims in a season of 30 open sea races held during the summer months, organised by Leinster Open Sea, and takes place usually on a Saturday in either late August or early September. Entrants to the Liffey Swim must complete six qualifying open sea races from the annual Leinster Open Sea Calendar (up from four pre-2015). Many levels and ages of swimmers compete in the race, but entrants must be a member of a swimming club. International competitors are common. The race is handicapped with the slowest swimmers starting first and the fastest last. For five years between 1934 and 1938, the Liffey Swim was run as a scratch race.^[1] In 2020 the Liffey Swim was not held because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time in its 102-year history, the 101st Liffey Swim in 2021 was swum upstream from the 3 Arena to the Custom House over an approx 1-mile course and took place on 23 October, the latest date ever, with the easing of Covid restrictions. Moreover, swimmers could elect to wear wetsuits or swimming togs and did not have to swim qualifying races to enter. Winners were declared in both the wetsuit and swimming togs categories, but the official winners of the annual trophies were those in swimming togs category. The winners in the wetsuit category were Aidan Fennin (St Fiach's SC) in a time of 25:48 and Bettina Korn (Eastern Bay SC) in 27:51. The fastest male swimmer in a wetsuit was Aidan Mullaney (Swim Ireland SC) in a time of 18:39. The fastest female swimmer in a wetsuit was Raphaelle Di Feliciantonio (Templeogue SC) in 21:10. The 102nd Liffey Swim was held on 24 September 2022 over its conventional course; 174 Women and 227 men completed the course.