Nomination: Ailen Lascano Micaz

Ailen has been involved officially in the ice swimming competition world since her first participation in 2019 at the Acqua Sphere German Open.

However her first ice swim ever took place at home, in Ushuaia, Tierra de Fuego, where she got into a frozen lake, Lago Esmeralda, in the middle of snowy mountains. To arrive to this place, one must hike for around 2 hours and a half, making it a very adventurous swim. 

I am NOT nominating Ailen,

• Because she has participated in 5 World Championships (both IISA and IWSA) and  13 World Cups (both IISA and IWSA) and 10 ice swimming events in Europe, Africa and South America. 
• Neither because she was the first LatinAmerican to achieve the ICE Triple Crown
• Or because she has observed 2 succesfull ice miles in Argentina. 

But because she inspires people not only to practice the sport, but to try cold water first, whatever your backgound or swimming experience. She advocates for safety in the sport and for positive experiences, so that swimmers can continue the practice for years to come and not come to a point where their body cannot tolerate the cold because of having many and very long inmersions without the proper preparation. She naturally promotes the sport in every interview or event she organizes. In Argentina, Ailen is already a reference in ice swimming and soon enough will be for LatinAmerica as well. 

Ailen has swum 3 ice miles, in Europe, in South American and in northern Africa and she is now looking to become the first LatinAmerican to achieve the ICE 7s. 

In the meantime, she has recently supported the shooting of a documentary film (called INMERSA) about ice swimming taking place in Ushuaia. For sure it will inspire more people in LatinAmerica and around the world to know the sport first, and to maybe try a cold inmersion as well. The release of this documentary is still pending. 

Today I consider Ailen my friend, however I first reached to her because I was looking for someone experienced and who I could trust, to officiate my ice mile in South America. 

I was very aware of the risks involved when attempting ice miles and Ailen was perfet in closing the gap of these risks while making it a life changing experience. It was a very succesfull ice mile for me and my other colleague swimmer, Marion. 

I am very new in the ice swimming world. At first it was hard to even visualize myself swimming in ice cold water, especially coming from a country like Mexico. However I started to see in social media other people doing it in far away countries like Morrocco and I felt I could do it too. I also started to think if, similar to Africa, we could find in Mexico where to swim in water around 5 degrees Celsius and hopefully less. 

I decided the first step was to read as much as possible about hipotermia and about the sport, so I decided to become an ice mile official from IISA. I enjoyed reading all the manuals and rules around ice swimming, before I even tried the sport. 

Then, in January 2024, an opportunity to swim in ice cold water appeared and the 1st National Ice Swimming Championship was organized in Chantilly, VA in USA. Only two Mexicans attended the event, and I was 1 of them. 

I will never forget that first sensation. I know I was not supposed to have that as my first experience, but different developments put me there. My first ever swim in 4.5C waters, was a 1km in a pool. It took me almost 100mts to be able to put my head inside the water, but when I finally did it, it felt like flying. That amazing experience made me want to try more of the sport. So a month later, together with some swimmers I just met in the Chantilly event, we organized ourselfes to try an ice mile in Boston. 

Just after Boston I learned that the Ice Triple Crown existed and that I just needed to swim another ice mile in the Southern Hemisphere to achieve that milestone. I gave it a lot of thought, because it is not easy to try to do something like this in a country and people you don\'t know. This is when I met Ailen, and the rest is history. I became the first Mexican to achieve the Ice Triple Crown, something I first thought was impossible for a Mexican. I was able to achieve this in less then a year. 

This coming January I will be attending World\'s at Molveno. I feel very excited and looking forward for the experience.