The build up to the Rio Olympics has been an exciting time and after the success of Team GB in London 2012, the nation was once again gripped by Olympic fever as the games came to the carnival city!

Earlier in the year we built the “Swim Rio” Challenge in preparation for Rio 2016 and encouraged our pools to get involved. Over 100 pools took part in the challenge which was run between 1st July and 5th August (the date of the opening ceremony) and we’re pleased to say that over 1600 SWIMTAG users got into the spirit, swimming the route that started at North Rio, passed Sugarloaf Mountain and Copacabana Beach and finished at Ipanema, all within view of the statue of Christ the Redeemer!

The challenge became one of our most popular almost overnight (beaten only by the Enhlish Channel Swim, the Giraltar Strait and “Escape from Alcatraz”.

The Swim Rio Challenge is one of dozens of challenges that have been mapped out by the SWIMTAG team. Some have been in iconic locations like the “Grand Canyon Swim” others have been local challenges for individual pools, who wanted to swim a body of water close to them. Challenge mapping is a free part of the service for all SWIMTAG pools!

We are pleased to announce that SWIMTAG can now be linked to two of the most popular fitness trackers on the market.

Runkeeper is particularly popular with runners and Fitbit is the world’s leading provider of wearable daily activity trackers!

By linking their SWIMTAG account to Fitbit or Runkeeper, it will mean that users can see all their activity tracked in one place, which is particularly useful for users looking to monitor their calorie intake and expenditure.

SWIMTAG already links with a number of similar trackers including Technogym’s mywellness cloud, MYZONE, Strava, Bounts and users can also link their SWIMTAG account to Facebook and post their swimming data directly to their timeline.

We are delighted to announce the launch of “Rule the Pool” a joint initiative between 222 Sports, Places for People Leisure and SWIMTAG.

Rule the Pool is designed to increase participation by giving swimmers the opportunity to take part in a weekly competition, swimming 500m and trying to log as fast a time as possible.

All participants will be given their time and weekly ranking and will be able to compare themselves against other swimmers in their pool and against hundreds of other swimmers in pools up and down the country, in their age and gender category.

Managing Director of 222 Sports Kieran Sloyan said “There are lots of great initiatives out there like ParkRun that get people involved in sports and we want to try and do the same for swimming. This initial 12 month pilot in association with Sport England and Places for People will allow us to develop Rule the Pool and launch it across the country in 2017.”

Rule the Pool will be exclusive to Places for People’s 70 swimming pools for the first 12 months, allowing the developers of the project to gather feedback from participants before we launch across all SWIMTAG pools next year.

Our trip to Elevate Arena, held at the Olympia in London gave the SWIMTAG team our first opportunity to show off our new Lane Displays.

Feedback from SWIMTAG users is that the data they get when they log in to their SWIMTAG account is fantastic, but it would be even better if SWIMTAG could also help them count their lengths whilst in the water... There’s nothing worse than finding out that you accidentally stopped two lengths short of your intended distance, when you’re already out of the water and changed!

With this in mind we’ve designed our new lane displays which will show swimmers their pace and the number of laps they have swum when they get to the end of the lane. The displays link up to the band using radio waves so it will display the data of whichever SWIMTAG wristband is closest to it.

The lightweight plastic shell and digital display is fully waterproof, the outer foam casing protects it from any damage and it also has a handy slot for your slow/medium/fast lane signs.

It runs on rechargeable batteries which can last a number of days and the magnetic charger is encased in plastic (just like your electric toothbrush).