I'm shooting for sprint and international distance this year, but if I can only do one then it will probably be just the sprint.  I didn't know how to swim to save my life, but I took some lessons and now I'm taking participating in swim clinics for open water swimming.  These clinics also focus on your stroke technique and all that good jazz. So I would say its not impossible to learn how to swim for a triathlon coming from someone who didn't know how to swim at all.  My goal for next year is to do a couple half ironmans and then do the big full ironman here in Henderson (Silverman).  I'm thinking about trying to set up a little challenge for myself like doing 10-15 halfs by the end of next year or something like that.