St Bathans - NZ Ice Swimming Championships

Saturday 12 July

Wow - what an incredible event! We woke early and left the house before sunrise, heading to St Bathans for the 2025 IISA Aotearoa NZ National Championships. Louis swims with several people who compete in the bizarre sport of ice swimming and he knows Sue & Becks who run this event so we’d been drafted in as helpers for the day! Arriving at the lake at St Bathans, the sun still had not risen, and Sue and a colleague were busy taking water temperature readings - to qualify as an ice swim the water must be 5*C or below ❄️ Fortunately the lake was around 4.9*C so they were all set to go.

There were 17 swimmers scheduled to compete today - swimming 500m, 1km, 1 mile, 2km or even more. Louis and I were given stopwatches ⏱️ and put on official timer duties under the watchful eyes of Warren and Jo.

There were a lot of roles involved in the championship - there was a kayaker who took photos and guided the blind swimmer, puller-outerers who helped the swimmers out once their feet touched the ground as they reached the end of the lake, two IRBs with crews who accompanied each swimmer up and down the lake, the crew shouting encouragement and monitoring the swimmers visually for signs of distress, a doctor to monitor their recovery afterwards (and assess their health in advance to decide whether they were fit to swim in the first place), and of course the time keepers - we had at least 3 stop watches per swimmer so we could get an average time and have back up if one timer failed (and several did).

Each swimmer had an allocated time slot, swam with a floaty device and were accompanied up the lake and back by a rescue and support team in a surf lifesaver-style RIB. There were no races, it was each individual swimmer pitting themselves against time and the elements attempting to knock off another distance or time.

Last year there were 26 competitors at Alexandra’s outdoor pool, this year in the open lake there were 51 over the four days - almost double!

Most impressive was Mary Fisher who was a blind Paralympian who swam 1km whilst loosely tethered to a kayak to guide her down the lake & back. This may be her in the landscape photo just above, but TBH I lost track of who was who after a while!

It was great to catch up with some of Louis’ ocean swimming friends from Auckland and meet new swimmers and helpers at the event. We chatted with a journalist from Stuff who was so fascinated by the event when covering it for the paper on Thursday, he’d come back for more stories and pictures on the Saturday!

Below left is Laetitia Berten coming back in from her mile - looking pretty damn good considering she would have been in that icy cold water for around 40 minutes!

Jonny joined us late morning, and in typical Jonny fashion got chatting to our fellow timer, Jo Collinge, who was from Yorkshire and had been at Oxford a year or two before him & Debs, and turned out to have the most fascinating career including CE of the Human Rights Commission for 10 years and Co-Chair of Oxfam NZ - wow!

I walked up to the pub during one of the breaks in the programme to check out the menu for lunch and met a lovely Canadian woman married to a Scot and now living in Lauder - she was walking Rupert who was the most enchanting spaniel, half King Charles and half Cocker, with the best freckles ever! Another breed combo for us to consider when we finally get back to dog ownership!

After a hiatus when they ran out of recovery beds and the wind whipped up waves across the lake causing later competitors to consider whether they wanted to brave the conditions, we watched Nickie’s colleague Paulette Tasker (above right) set off on her 1km swim, then retired to the Vulcan for lunch. Burgers for the boys and big portion of Blue Cod & chips for me - yum!

Chilled out back at Jonny’s place, had a siesta, and I did our bed linen laundry (washing at theirs, drying at Kiwi Laundry in town) while he cooked us fajitas for dinner. By then I’d just about thawed out from our morning standing at the lakeside - I’ve no idea how the swimmers coped!!!

The moon rising over the horizon as I came back from town was stunning - I have never seen this phenomenon before - the golden glow in the dark sky was glorious.

Enjoyed watching the All Blacks thrash France as we ate our fajitas, and fell into bed exhausted by other people’s efforts!!!