+1. It was specifically SQLAlchemy (but not limited to it -- there are many other blocking APIs) that made me look for a way to easily use threads with native coroutines.

The best workaround I've come up with:

from asyncio import wrap_future

async def foo():
    await wrap_future(executor.submit(...))

But as I mentioned before, wrap_future() is nowhere to be found in the asyncio docs.