{"id":3355,"date":"2026-08-21T07:43:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T07:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/?p=3355"},"modified":"2026-08-25T16:51:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T16:51:53","slug":"como-encontrei-a-natacao-e-o-swim4fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/como-encontrei-a-natacao-e-o-swim4fun\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Found Swimming \u2014 and Swim4fun"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My name is Igor. I am Ukrainian, almost forty, and I definitely do not have the classic athlete\u2019s origin story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a child, I did sport on minimum settings. I could ride a bicycle, swim in a river, and for a while I tried boxing and a few other contact sports. Until I was about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, my sporting achievements were limited to occasionally visiting a normal gym.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Ironman entered my universe, and I caught triathlon fever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found a coach in Ukraine and started running, cycling and swimming. My first proper carbon road bike weighed 6.95 kilograms and felt less like a bicycle and more like alien technology. Cycling was immediately fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Running and I had a more complicated relationship. I completed a few 10-kilometre races, obstacle races of up to about 16 kilometres, and could run 5 kilometres in 25\u201326 minutes, which was perfectly acceptable to me. I eventually completed two Olympic-distance triathlons, although I never made it to a half-Ironman. I respect running, but the love was never mutual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swimming was different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I work as an engineer and spend most of my day sitting in front of a computer. Swimming helped my back, but it also gave me something mentally. In a swimming pool, nobody calls you, no driver sounds a horn, no dog runs into your path, and no message needs an immediate answer. There is only the water, your breathing and the next wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can think about work, relationships, the future, finances or absolutely nothing. For me, a swimming pool is training, recovery and meditation at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, swimming stopped being just one third of a triathlon and became the main event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, I crossed the Bosphorus for the first time: 6.5 kilometres from Asia to Europe. Before the race, everyone had a frightening story. There were difficult currents near the finish, swimmers who missed the exit, dolphins that appeared unexpectedly, and many other reasons why everything could go wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything went fine. I finished in 1:22:51 and immediately decided that next year I should return and aim much higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I trained seriously. In July 2017, I completed the AQUAMAN 3.8-kilometre swim in Kyiv in 1:20:07 and then returned to the Bosphorus. This time I finished in 1:11:02, almost twelve minutes faster than the year before. The podium remained theoretical, but the improvement was real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came OCEANMAN Benidorm, a roughly 10-kilometre course around Benidorm Island and back. The waves felt about one and a half metres high, and the time limit was four hours. I finished in 3:59:52.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eight seconds under the limit is still under the limit. I consider it a masterpiece of time management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One souvenir from that period is my very basic OCEANMAN tow buoy. It is simply a round inflatable ball with one attachment point: no pockets, no light and no advanced engineering. My wife Julia and I named him Arkadiy. He may now be my longest-serving swimming partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open-water races in Ukraine always had their own special character. My private rule was that the more amateur the event, the more seriously everyone fought for position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, I swam from Dzharylhach Island to Skadovsk. The official course was 7.5 kilometres, but my Garmin had a different opinion. When it showed eight kilometres and the finish still appeared to be somewhere around halfway, I became slightly suspicious. By the end, it had recorded 13.7 kilometres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was shallow, slightly salty water, a wetsuit, gels, drinking water and support boats occasionally appearing to ask if everything was all right. Everything was all right, although I had never before thought about Ukrainian race organisation with quite so much affection. Whatever the official number, it remains the longest swim that my watch and shoulders remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Bukovel in 2021, I followed another excellent preparation strategy. My train arrived at five in the morning, the race started at eight, the lake was high in the Carpathian Mountains, and I was wearing a new wetsuit. During the first kilometre, I felt as if there was not enough oxygen. This frightened me enough to swim faster so the experience would finish sooner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently, panic can be an effective race strategy: I finished in 22:13 and took third place in my age group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Then came 2022 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I was in the United States for work, while Julia was in Lviv. We reunited in Turkey, and for a while sport stopped being important. Life became about family, safety, documents, work, finances and deciding where we could go next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Portugal was originally supposed to be a two-month stop while we prepared documents to travel to the United States with our dog. But Portugal had other plans for us. Julia loved the climate, the food and the friendly people. On 3 September, while we were travelling along the Cascais coast, she announced: \u201cForget America. We are staying in Portugal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that was that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, I swam alone in a small basement club pool in Oeiras. Later, after we moved to Linda-a-Velha, I found the Jamor swimming pool. Joining involved a small Portuguese administrative adventure, followed by a swimming assessment in which the coach asked me to swim two lengths. I did, and apparently that was sufficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jamor is one of the best pools I have seen anywhere. I trained there for more than a season, although work was still the priority and my attendance was probably somewhere between 60 and 80 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2026, I received an invitation to the 38th Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swimming Race. As usual, I registered first and investigated the requirements afterwards. I then discovered that I needed an Ability to Swim certificate and a licence from the Portuguese Swimming Federation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That search led me to Bibiana Farias and Clube Swim4fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially, I thought I was joining a club to solve a paperwork problem. The paperwork was solved, but I found something much more valuable: a local swimming community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bibiana showed me the Portuguese open-water calendar and races I would never have discovered on my own. The club\u2019s WhatsApp group always has some new plan: we are training here, swimming there, or travelling somewhere for another competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Swim4fun, I have already completed the 2.5-kilometre Travessia Ant\u00f3nio Bessone Basto from Pa\u00e7o de Arcos to Oeiras, the 3-kilometre Meeting de \u00c1guas Abertas da Goma, and the 3.5-kilometre race at Barragem da Queimadela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Goma, the water felt like a natural jacuzzi. One moment it was warm, the next cold, and then an underwater current provided something resembling a massage. Queimadela was completely different: a beautiful reservoir, a large beach, a big organisation and, once again, Portuguese swimmers moving at maximum speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I currently finish somewhere near the back, usually with five or ten people behind me. The Portuguese do not simply participate in open-water races \u2014 they attack them. But I have already met other Ukrainians and many good people along the way. I am now trying to complete enough races to be classified in the Portuguese National Open Water Circuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I write this, I am preparing to travel to Istanbul for my third Bosphorus crossing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started swimming because triathlon required it. I stayed because the water gave me silence. And I joined Swim4fun because even a solitary sport becomes much better when you have people to share it with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am very happy to have found the club, to be racing again, and to be wondering where we are all going to swim next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Igor<\/strong> Stadnyk<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chamo-me Igor. Sou ucraniano, tenho quase quarenta anos e, definitivamente, n\u00e3o tenho a hist\u00f3ria cl\u00e1ssica de origem de um atleta. Em crian\u00e7a, praticava desporto nas “defini\u00e7\u00f5es m\u00ednimas”. Sabia andar de bicicleta, nadar num rio e, durante algum tempo, experimentei boxe e outros desportos de combate. At\u00e9 por volta dos vinte e oito ou vinte e … <\/p>\n

Read more “Como Encontrei a Nata\u00e7\u00e3o \u2014 e o Swim4fun”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sem-categoria-en"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Clube Swim4fun","author_link":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/author\/geralclube-swim4fun-pt\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3355"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3361,"href":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3355\/revisions\/3361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clube-swim4fun.pt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}