Oceania Dive Travel & Watersports Expo

Australian National Fin Swimming Competition at ODEX

Please review and download the timetable and official application here.

Fin swimming is a competitive swimming sport involving the use of fins.  Competition Distances are similar to conventional swimming ranging from 50m to 1500m for surface events.  We could liken the thrill of Fin Swimming compared to conventional swimming as that of Ice Hockey compared to grass hockey in as much as they both are faster and more exciting.

Elite competitors use a tale shaped Mono Fin where two feet fit into one large blade, but some still compete in duo fins or flippers.   Elite competitors also swim without arms and use a special front fitting snorkel to breathe, moving through the water in a dolphin style motion.

Fin swimming is a fairly new competition, and was developed in Europe. After The First European Championship in 1967 and The First World Championship in 1976, International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved it as a regular event in 1986.

Origins of Australian Fin Swimming
Fin Swimming competitions in Australia have been conducted as a non-serious sport at the Australian Championships since 1971. Until 1988 all Fin Swimming Competitors at the Australian titles competed in other underwater sports and finswimming was a way of gaining extra State points. At the Australian tittles conducted at Bridgeport in Tasmania, Bruno Nufer, a spear-fishing competitor from NSW competed in large fiberglass fins (duos). These were the first fiberglass fins to be used at a finswimming competition in Australia. The following year, Nufer introduced the first Mono Fin that he had brought from Switzerland.

Finswimming remained an unimportant part of the Australian Underwater Federation's scene until 1988 when CMAS applied to the International Olympic Committee to have Finswimming accepted as an Olympic Sport. That year, Underwater Hockey players, Les Proud from Queensland and Junior competitor Richard Lane from Tasmania, broke ten of twelve existing Australian records for Finswimming events. Les Proud went onto be Australia's first International competitor competing at the 5th World Championships in Rome 1990. Les was Australia's only competitor for these events and broke 6 Australian records. He spent two months training with the Dutch and Swiss teams prior to his competition and was able to bring back to Australia new training methods and ideas for equipment.

At Australia's first Asian Championships in Seoul, South Korea, six of the team members made finals with one exciting finish that put Amanda Jackson into fourth place by only part of a second over 1500 m. Her Australian record made in Seoul stood until 1994. Australian records were broken in every women's event.
Australia's first team effort for the 6th World Championships of 1992 in Athens, consisted of a team of ten competitors. Eleven Australian records were broken, some of them twice. The most outstanding record was by the second youngest team member, 17yr old Jeremy Morse who took 26 seconds off his old time to finish 23rd overall in the 1500m event.

In 1994, Australia competed for the third time at the world championships. Two Australian team members, a much improved nineteen year old Jeremy Morse and Sabina Lane (25) gained the best placing both finishing 17th & 18th. Jeremy in the 1500m Surface event and Sabina in the 400m Scuba event.