Vidösternsimmet, live.

Sweden’s longest swim, down a lake and back

Forty-two kilometres of open water in a Småland lake, each swimmer shadowed by their own kayak the whole way.

Vidösternsimmet is the longest open-water swimming race in Sweden. The distances — 42, 21 and 6 kilometres — all run out from Osudden in Värnamo down Lake Vidöstern, with the longest doubling back for a full traverse and return. Every swimmer on the long distances is accompanied by their own support kayak, which carries their food and their bearings and is the only reason a swim of that length is possible at all.

Nothing about open-water swimming is visible from the shore: after the first few hundred metres a swimmer is a dot, and after an hour they are not even that. Livebib puts the line of the lake on the map with the swimmer on it, distance covered and an arrival estimate for the finish that keeps updating — so the people waiting at Osudden know whether it is going well without having to read the water.