17-Year-Old Canadian Swimmer Drowns While on Training Trip in Florida

By Braden Keith on SwimSwam

17-year-old Canadian swimmer William Zhang has died while open-water swimming with his Canadian swim team in Florida.

Zhang went missing around 9 AM on Wednesday off Indian Shores, Florida, about 25-miles west of Tampa on a barrier island. Zhang, a student at Montreal’s Collège Notre-Dame, was a member of his school’s swim team which was in Florida on a training camp over spring break.

Pinellas Suncoast Fire Rescue Chief told local media that there were choppy water conditions and rip currents on Wednesday morning, but that conditions improved as the day went on.

A person who called 911 told authorities that the swimmer was pulled off-shore by rip currents, and officials say that the group was a few hundred yards off-shore.

One witness, Rick Ross, told the Tampa Bay Times that about 10 swimmers were in the water when he saw one of the boys “bobbing about 200 yards from shore.”

Ross said that he lost sight of the boy as someone on a surf board tried to reach him.

Zhang was pronounced dead at 5:23PM on Wednesday.

A news release from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Offices said that “Per detectives, the swim coaches advised that they checked for riptides or hazards before the swimmers entered the water.”

The sheriff’s office also said that the incident “does not appear to be suspicious in nature.”

Rip currents, which can move as fast as 6-8 feet per second, cause hundreds of drownings globally every year and lead to tens of thousands of surf rescues. The United States Lifesaving Association found that there are over 100 deaths each year in the US attributed to rip currents.

SwimSwam: 17-Year-Old Canadian Swimmer Drowns While on Training Trip in Florida