Report by Philippa Rickard
Another weekend in Sydney for three Vikings swimmers (and a supporter husband)! This time they weren’t seeing the inside the four walls of a swimming pool, but instead, when taking a breath, they saw the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge — you just can’t beat that!
Caroline & Scott Makin and Philippa Rickard started the weekend with some relaxing time on Manly beach on the Saturday afternoon, followed by a couple of cold beers in at the Bavarian Beer Café and sampling the locally brewed ‘4 Pines’. After meeting up with Kristen Leydon, they continued the socially acceptable pastime of dinner and a few drinks!
Sunday morning arrived (together with fuzzy heads) and they all headed to the Opera House for an early start at 8am. The racing started with the celebrity 900m race (the Vikings thought they’d leave that up to the people in their luminous Budgie Smugglers!).
Next up was the 1km Mini Classic Swim in which both Kristen and Philippa were swimming. All the Female swimmers squeezed into the very small area behind the start line (with all the arms & legs flailing to tread water, trying to avoid getting hit)!
Philippa was overtaken half way by a couple of purple hats, but held on to finish 7th Female overall and ended up a happy 2nd place in the Women’s 35-44 age group with a time of 16:04. Kristen got another solid mighty open water swim under her belt in 23:17 finishing in 16th place in he Women’s 35-44 age group.
Caz was up next in the 2km Classic Swim and was in the 4th wave alongside all Males and Females in the 40-49 age groups. She had a great swim and was racing all the way to the steps … ran up the steps and over to the finish line when from a distance she just disappeared! Scott and Philippa looked at each other and said “OMG she’s fallen!”. Whereas most swimmers just walked/ran over the finish line, Caz decided to make it a finish to remember by sliding over the line on her bottom! As well as taking 4th place in the Women’s 40-44 age group in a time of 30:48 and 24th overall Female, she also took home a very big bruise and bloodied elbows!!
Full Results are available.
