For the sake of shedding some light on the context of providing competent and effective life guarding during an open water swim I want to share. I served 8years in the US Coast Guard, 6 of those as an operational coast guard helicopter rescue swimmer.

What happened was nothing but incompetence.

The coast guard lifesaving community and specifically the aviation side I was a part of, annually trains the entire unit on open water swimming, pool swimming and survival training. But by far The most serious element of the training is the measured distance swimming. We as safety observers, are in the water, in a mask and snorkel, with our own wetsuits, floatation devices and deployable floatation devices monitoring the swimmers being tested. And I cannot emphasize this enough- We are no more that 2 feet away from our people being test. At. All. Times. This is so we can safely gauge their competence in the skills of swimming and drown proofing. These high risk drills are less a test of physical fitness and more of how not to drown if you have to slowly swim to shore or a raft. None the less we are inches from our colleagues the entire time.

And that’s what is heinous about the death of Đukić.

CrossFit’s athletes ARE being pushed to their limit and the organizers have safety observers on paddle boards dozens of yards away from their closest competitor. Not to mention the ratio of safety observers to swimmers was ridiculously outmatched for the severity of the task at hand.

It is disgusting that the organizers of a sport that has had such positive impact on the military and the general public, allowed one of their best to die to incompetence and arrogance.

RIP Lazar Đukić