Open water swimming’s governance challenges in a changing ocean: the case of the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore

This paper analyzes the open water swimming events at the 22nd World Aquatics Championships in Singapore (Sentosa, 15–20 July 2025). During the competition, elevated E. coli levels led to race postponements, while the recorded seawater temperature of 30°C – below the World Aquatics (WA) operational threshold of 31°C – was associated with adverse athlete outcomes. The study triangulates : (i) a structured review of WA’s (2024) open water swimming guidelines against Singapore’s environmental monitoring systems and climate adaptation policies; (ii) a localised analysis of historical sea-surface temperature (SST) trends in the Singapore Strait (2002-2025); and (iii) WA governance and host destination policy documents. Applying the ISO 9000 definition of effectiveness,compliance with the WA operational threshold did not necessarily ensure athlete safety, characterising an ineffective process. The probabilistic analysis indicates that the recorded event temperature was a near-certain outcome and that the WA threshold had a non-negligible probability of being breached. Theoperational margin was tighter than a snapshot-based reading would imply, and foreseeable from long-term data. It concludes that changing ocean conditions challenge the WA rules and proposes four governance mechanisms for WA host-city strategy: (a) mandatory long-series environmental and climate datasets in host-city bidding; (b) climate-risk scoring models that evaluate environmental exposure and operational vulnerability of candidate cities ; (c) integration of medium- and long-term climate intelligence with short-term operational monitoring to inform site selection, event scheduling, and adaptation planning; and (d) dynamic capabilities that enable WA to transform ocean-related environmental knowledge from an operational constraint into a strategic asset.