SA athletes to attend ice swimming championships

EIGHT South African swimmers will join other swimmers from 29 countries at the third Ice Swimming World Championships in Murmansk, Russia.

The national team will be led by veteran ice swimmer and founder of the International Ice Swimming Association, Ram Barkai.

The competition taking place on March 14 will be held deep in the Arctic Circle. It will comprise every swimming discipline and will cover distances from 50m to 1 000m.

The swimmers will be allowed to swim in just a standard speed-style swimming costume, goggles and one silicon cap.

Ice swimming has come a long way since its humble beginnings 10 years ago; this is in part due to the increasing popularity of winter swimming and its purported mental and physical benefit.

Recently, Barkai led 14 ice swimmers from nine countries to participate in the first ever 1 000m competition in Antarctica.

The contingent in Murmansk will consist of Barkai, 62, Charl Allen, 31, Marcelle Stiemans, 52, Maryse Pretorius, 31, Mervyn Bremner, 65, Neil Hopkins, 38, Samantha Whelpton, 34, and Tom Maydon, 39.

Most of the groups are Cape Townbased, and to train they swim regularly in the Atlantic, where temperatures occasionally drop below 10ºC.

The world championships will include delegates from Fina and the International Olympic Committee, who will assess the sport for potential inclusion in future Winter Olympics.

Swimmers will include former Summer Olympic athletes such as the defending champion, Bulgarian Peter Stoychev, a four-time Olympian widely regarded as the greatest marathon swimmer of all time.

“The South Africans, despite a limited amount of ice water at home, are playing a pivotal role in ice swimming around the world,” according to Barkai.

There is an annual national championship, with the next is to be held in the mountains of Lesotho on July 28.