Tunarama Provides Plenty of Open Water Swimming Action

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The 2014 Tunarama Swim-Thru was a huge success for the West Coast Swimming Club, with 15 swimmers from the club completing the 1 kilometre swim. Brooke Traeger finished first in the Junior and Open female division in a time of 13 minutes 55 seconds, crossing the line in second position overall and earning herself $100 for her efforts. Henry Lambert swam a great time of 14 minutes and 9 seconds, winning the Junior Male division, and placing second in the Open Male division finishing just ahead of Levi Proude (14.31), who took second in the Junior male division. Swimmers including James Andrews, Gerard Meyer and Nik Constantinopoulos finished in the top 15, with young Max Lambert and Tommy Ford nipping at their heels . Kellie Dennis completed the swim in 17.36 and was recognised with a silver medal in the Junior Female category. The young swimmers all swam well, and the club has some great talent coming through. Special mention should go to Sonia Ford who swam very well showing all of the West Coast Juniors how it’s done swimming a time of 17:16.

Immediately after the swim-through presentations were completed, the swimmers changed into their West Coast jumpers and psyched up for the Tug-of-war. The club entered two teams, one in the Mixed Division and one in the Open. The Mixed team included Sonia Ford, Soraya Proude, Alleigh Hamnett, Brooke Traeger, Maddi Izzo, Max Lambert, Nik Constantinopoulos and James Andrews. The team put in a great effort against the EFM team but didn’t have the weight to take out the win. Up next was the Open team, of Luke Andrews, Levi Proude, Mick Proude, Rod Patterson, Henry Lambert, Gerard Meyer, Brenton Hammond and Jason Di-Paulo, who put up a great fight but again simply didn’t have the weight needed to win a tug-of-war against rival teams. Everyone had lots of laughs and thoroughly enjoyed the competition, and as Gerard said “If this were in the water we would have won."

Swimmers now have their sights set on the Whyalla Open Water swim which offers a range of distances up to 5km,the Lincoln 'Longman' Triathlon which includes a 2km open water event and the Port Pirie Open Water in March. It was also fantastic to see members of the club participate in the Tunarama Triathlon on the Sunday and Tunarama Fun Run on Monday, proving that West Coast Swimmers are multi talented across other sporting fields!

Thanks to Luke Andrews for providing this blog post :)

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Swim Thru Results available on Lincoln Tri Website