Dubai school children dive into Guinness World Record attempt

Children at Dubai’s Wild Wadi take part in a world record attempt for the largest global swimming class. Antonie Robertson / The National

DUBAI // Almost 100 school children made a splash as part of a Guinness World Record attempt to hold the world’s largest swimming lesson, but it was water safety that was at the forefront of people’s minds.

On Thursday people in 22 countries around the world joined together to try and break last year’s record of 36,564 swimmers in the water at the same time.

Sheldon Rajoo, assistant operations manager at Wild Wadi Waterpark, said the lesson focused on water and sun safety and technique as well as fun.

“This is more than just a world record; it’s about water safety. I feel safety is more important than the record. Looking at kids and seeing them enjoy this is important. There are a lot of child deaths here so whatever we can do to promote this is potentially another life saved.”

Mr Rajoo, who also travels to schools to teach water safety and swimming, said getting the message out to parents was just as important as educating children.

“A lot of parents don’t go through the proper safety lessons so we are hopeful that these kids will educate their kids, and even their parents.”

Around 90 children from Raffles World Academy aged between seven and 12 joined in the 30-minute event. Officials from Guinness said it would take a few weeks to gather all the information before they know for sure if the record had been broken

Mariana Marx, the waterpark’s operations director, agreed that aside from having fun in the water, the key message was safety.

“Swimming saves lives,” she said. “This is about raising awareness.”

Tony Azoulay, dean of students at RIS, said such events were important. “We’re always trying to promote water safety,” he said. “This ties in with what we’ve been doing over the year. We’ve done a number of events with the waterpark’s lifeguards.

“Living in the Middle East, where there is so much access to water with beaches and pools, it’s even more important that kids know how to be safe.”

The baking heat of the first day of Ramadan did not dampen the youngsters enthusiasm. “We’ve had many of the Muslim pupils join in,” said Mr Azoulay. “Definitely the numbers would have been higher but people have still come.”

Drowning is the third leading cause of accidental death of children, according to stats from Safe Kids Middle East and Dubai Municipality.

Most drownings and near-drownings occur when a child accidentally falls into a residential pool or is left alone in a bathtub. For every child who dies, four more are hospitalised.

Australian pupil, Ella Foreman, 12, was one of the youngsters taking part.

“I wanted to do it because I like swimming,” she said. “It was a fun activity to do with my friends. I’m moving next week back to Malaysia so I wanted to spend time with my friends. It’s nice to make some memories with them.”