Axana Merckx was far more placid than the choppy waters she emerged from before anyone else in the 3.1-kilometre portion of Peachland’s Rattle Snake Island swim on the weekend.
“Open water is my favourite,” said the 14-year-old, Saturday morning, moments after she finished the event in a time of 47 minutes and 47 seconds.
It was a time that broke her personal best time of 50 minutes set at last year’s event.
Merckx usually swims for Kelowna’s Aqua Jets, but she has an aptitude for open water swimming that she hopes to apply elsewhere in the future.
“(The sport) is just starting to get bigger,” she said, adding “where that goes, I want to go.”
Former competitive swimmer and triathlete Jeremy Roles explained the Rattle Snake Island swim was less about honing his chops as a racer, and more about competing in an environment close to his friends and family.
That said, he still took first place in the seven-kilometre track, emerging from the water before anyone else.
“I thought it may be possible,” he said, of how he gauged his chances before he got into the water.
That said, there are a lot of factors that get in the way of a good swim in open water events, the most important of which being Mother Nature.
This year the water
for the annual Peachland event was hot and choppy, although not unmanageable.
Then there’s the tangle of legs and arms that swimmers have to emerge from to find their place in the pack.
Roles said his strategy helped through it all.
‘I went a little easier in the first half, then I pushed it a little harder on the way back,” he said, noting he had a swim partner for some of the race who he inevitably left behind.
The toughest part, he pointed out, was not getting lost in the giant body of water that is Okanagan Lake.
While swimmers may feel the pitfalls of being a small fish in a giant lake, organizers had their backs.
This year was the first time that Kelowna’s Across the Lake Society took over the event, which raises funds to teach Grade 3 students in the Central Okanagan how to swim, through a YMCA program.
With its involvement, enrolment was bolstered, explained race director Valentia Miller.
“We have 160 participants registered, and 140 came out (Saturday),” she said.
No event time records were broken on Saturday.
The society can only go back to 2010 for records, as the District of Peachland, which ran the event previously, didn’t keep anything before that.
