A field of 88 started in the first race of three Clements Endurance Series – 85 in the long course over 2km and three in the 600m option. Alec Swan set the race record of 21.26 in perfect conditions last year. This time round, conditions weren’t as good, with quite a choppy patch in the middle. Nevertheless, Alec set out …
Woo hoo. It was such an exciting swim and a real test of local knowledge, awareness and having clean goggles. A stronger than expected current had swimmers spread all over the harbour. At the front, it didn’t matter. Brother and sister combo Alec and Brooke Swan won the long and short swims respectively, with Oxford Bayley and Abbey Smale taking …
Thursday November 19 Opening night is so exciting. At 5pm it was bleak – chilly wind and choppy seas, but an hour later it was near perfect. Warm too, with a balmy 18 degrees water temperature. Oxford Bayley celebrated his birthday (thanks mum) in style, holding off Hayden Squance by three seconds. Alec Swan was next, followed by Abbey Smale, …
Swimmers and triathletes will be saddened to hear of the recent death of Colin Wragg, aged 73, pictured just two summers ago. Colin and I were of a similar age, and had many fierce triathlon battles, with neither of us giving the other much leeway, but always enjoying the encounters.. He competed in triathlon world championships on the Gold Coast …
The Covid-19 lockdown has been just the time to write some profiles on swimmers – to help our Nelson swim community get to know each other. I’ll be trying to publish a profile each day, adding them to this page as we go – Peter Gibbs The profiles will also be available on Facebook at The Nelson Sea Swim Zone …
The official rankings for the Banana Boat Ocean Swim Series are out. In the end, the rankings were formulated using each swimmer’s best two swims (rather than the three that would have been the case had all swims been held). Abbey Smale (pictured) was the comfortable winner of the overall title, displacing year’s winner Sierra Thomas, who placed third in …
It came upon us so fast – the end of the season. For those still swimming around the country, there’s still three Ocean Swim Series events to go, but here in Nelson it’s the end of the line until November. Featured photo: A sight you never see. Luke Kelly with a cap – is he in fancy dress? The final …
What a fantastic day and what a fantastic event. The weather was perfect and the sea was beautiful as Nelson swimmers took the first five places (Luke Kelly, Hayden Squance, Fergus Drummond, Oxford Bayley and Abbey Smale) overall in the 3k race, as well as seventh (Terry Bone), 10th (Isabella Thurlow), 12th (Hamish Neill), 15th (Sierra Thomas) and 19th (Matt …
The last competition swim for this summer. As is always the way at the end of the season, it was a beautiful night with a full tide and calm conditions and we swam the same course as last week – anticlockwise around the harbour. In the long swim of about 1700m, a lead bunch of five, Luke Kelly, Oxford Bayley, …
As expected, the sea for this annual 3.8km swim was a bit lumpy, but nowhere near as rough as it might have been. It was shallow around the bottom of Haulashore Island, but wonderfully warm over the rocks. Luke Kelly, Oxford Bayley and Hayden Squance set the pace, followed by Sierra Thomas and that was the finish order for the …