And what a season we’ve had.
This season the ladies have ruled! 6 swimmers: four women, two men; 8 lengths of the lake swum: six by the ladies, two by the blokes.
Congratulations to Victoria Pinarello, Brian Gray, Dean Thomson, and Claire Hobson and welcome to the 40.2 club.
Little did I know at the start of the season we would have a longstanding record of the lake broken not just once, but twice. That record is for the fastest women’s double Taupo crossing, first set by Sandra Blewett in 1986 at 33 hours 21 minutes. The next time this feat was attempted was in 2019 by Eliza Cummings who came oh so close to completing her double crossing. We’ve waited 36 years, and this season I watched for way too many hours the little tracker as first Caitlin O’Reilly (28hrs 2min) in March, and then Rebecca Hollingsworth (27hrs 48min) at the start of April took on and conquered this huge double challenge. I was pretty much speechless then, and I still don’t have too many words to describe how impressed I am with these two women’s dedication and resolve to both swim over 80km, hold such a consistent pace throughout and beat the old record by more than 5 hours!
Huge congratulations to you both Caitlin and Rebecca, and I look forward to seeing what you both get up to next season.