MAKING WAVES AT ANGLESEA
Ingilby Dickson, daughter Greta, and Australian Olympian Rowie Webster are gearing up for today’s Rock2Ramp ocean swim at Anglesea.
A RECORD number of entries for today’s Rock2Ramp remains the goal for Anglesea Surf Lifesaving Club, with perfect summer conditions forecast for the fundraising event.
Early on Boxing Day, the club had received 500 entries across its three races — the 2.5km, 1.2km and the kids’ dash — and club president Tom Cullen said numbers were tracking favourably.
“We’ve got about 500 entries so far, which is a little bit higher than what we’d normally expect pre-event,” the race organiser said on Tuesday.
“Obviously the weather is forecast to be great — 30 degrees on Thursday, so they’re great conditions for the swim.
“There’s plenty of spots still available in the 1.2km — we have a max of 1000 for that.
“We’re obviously hoping for a really good race in what’s forecast to be really good conditions.”
Shark warnings closed a number of beaches last year and poor weather deterred a large crowd from attending the Point Roadknight beach event.
But Cullen said there would be no excuses this summer.
“Last year wasn’t great. A number of beaches including Fairhaven and others were closed,” he said.
“We were fortunate we were able to run the event. It was a fairly wet and windy event on the day. Hopefully we can get good numbers to this event.
“It’s one of our major fundraisers; obviously it’s the largest event the club runs.
“We generally expect about 1000 swimmers and a couple of thousand spectators. We’re also fundraising at the moment for a redevelopment of our building, so these funds will help go towards that as well as the general operations of the club.”
Cullen said he was expecting last year’s 2.5km male and female winners Matt Gilling and Naomi Scott to defend their titles.
The 2.5km commences at 10am today, the kids’ dash at 10.45am and the first 1.2km category hits the water at 11.10am.