South Surrey student swimmer creates injury awareness site
Published 9:47 am Monday, July 20, 2026
A South Surrey student athlete has created a website to help prevent similar injuries for others after experiencing his own, swimming-related injuries.
Ethan Guo, who just graduated from Grade 11 at Southridge, has been a competitive swimmer for several years, but has experienced shoulder and groin injuries that affected his training and competition.
He first noticed an occasional sharp pain in his groin when kicking while swimming the breast stroke during practice, Guo said, but it seemed to just happen randomly, and rarely.
“So I didn’t really worry about it,” Guo recalled.
In March of 2024, during Swim B.C.’s winter provincial championships, Guo experienced the same pain while swimming in the 200 breast event.
“(The 200 breast stroke) was my best event … it was the first time my injury actually happened during a race … it really wasn’t good, and I wasn’t prepared for that,” he shared, noting he added several seconds onto his time.
“It affected my performance and it was the first time I realized that there was something wrong.”
At the next competition, his injury even resulted in a disqualification because of an illegal kick while he was racing in breast stroke events.
“In my first event, my 200 meter breaststroke, (my injury) happened. And then I got disqualified because I couldn’t really do (a proper) breast stroke kick and I did (an) illegal kick.”
Then, because he was so focused on not doing an illegal kick without hurting himself, he was “holding back” with his kick, he said, noting the injury affected him mentally as well as physically.
He talked about the injuries he experienced with his fellow athletes, but noticed no one was really raising awareness about the kinds of injuries competitive swimmers often deal with.
“I noticed that swimming injuries are a problem that many athletes experience, including some of my own friends and teammates, but I did not see many people actively raising awareness about it,” Guo said. “Because of this, I wanted to take initiative and create a resource that could help swimmers, coaches, and parents better understand injury prevention.”
Guo created a Swimming Injuries Awareness website, swimminginjuriesawareness.com, a site he describes as an educational resource “designed to help swimmers recognize common injuries, warning signs, and prevention strategies, backed up by scientific research.”
Guo’s website covers injuries associated with every competitive swimming stroke, injury prevention techniques, warning signs that athletes should not overlook, and information from reputable medical and swimming organizations, he shared.
“It also links to my YouTube channel, where I have started posting short educational videos about swimming injuries,” Guo said, with some videos reaching more than 1,000 total views.
Guo said he plans to continue developing the website and adding more videos over time.
“As a student athlete, I hope this resource can help make injury prevention a bigger part of the conversation in swimming.”