April 10, 2025 • 43 mins
Our first 'swim history' episode! Featuring special guest John Hancock, a marathon swimmer and the organiser of this year's ANZAC Day swim in Wellington. In this episode John tells the story of the brave, accomplished, and fascinating Sir Bernard Freyberg who painted himself in black and undertook a stealthy nighttime swim in Gallipoli during World War One. We also discuss a few other notable swimmers in history: John F Kennedy, Kahe Te-Rau-o-te-Rangi, and Mao Zedong. Finally, John Hancock reflects on his own 'big' swims, across Lake Taupō and Cook Strait / Raukawa Moana.
Lots of background links for this one – it is a history episode, after all!
Shona's family war tortoise (Great War Stories, NZHistory.govt. nz).
ANZAC biscuit recipe (Edmonds Cooking)
Bernard Freyberg's Wikipedia page
Image of Freyberg (taken in 1904 at Te Aro Baths in Wellington) is courtesy of Horowhenua Historical Society inc, Levin, New Zealand
'Debunking Freyberg's Mexican myth' – NZ International Review
'When Sir Bernard tried to swim the Channel' – Greymouth Evening Star, August 1950, via paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Kahe Te-Rau-o-te-Rangi, who swam from Kāpiti Island to the mainland in 1824 (Eleanor Spragg. 'Te Rau-o-te-rangi, Kahe', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990, updated July, 2013. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand)
'The swim that changed Chinese history' (Mao Zedong's river swims) The China Project, 14 July 2021.
'Caroline Kennedy recreates her father JFK's heroic wartime swim.' CNN, August 2023. (correction: JFK's crew were attacked by a Japanese boat, not a plane as I incorrectly stated in this episode)
John Hancock talks about his Cook Strait and Lake Taupō swims on the Effortless Swimming podcast
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to the Swim Chats podcast.
I'm Shona Riddell, a writer, former journalist and ocean
swimmer from Wellington, Altiro and New Zealand.
For each episode, I'll feature adifferent guest from our swim
community. They'll be dippers.
Adventure swimmers, coaches and conservationists with one thing
in common. They all love being in the sea,
(00:24):
so whether you're a swimmer yourself or just interested in
stories about the ocean and people expanding their comfort
zones, I hope you enjoy these swim chats.
Please hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss an episode.
This is the first ever swim history episode that we've done
(00:44):
and in the history of this podcast, which has been running
a whole 2 weeks, it's very exciting.
And today we have a special guest, John Hancock, who is a
Wellington Ocean swimmer. I know you're a marathon
swimmer, John, as well and the organizer of our annual Anzac
Day swim. So welcome John to the show and
(01:11):
would you mind explaining to us exactly what an Anzac Day swim
is for people who? Don't.
Yeah. So you, you explained to me
before we started recording thatyou're aiming to build an
enormous international audience.That's right.
Will know what what an ANZAC is.So the acronym ANZAC, it stands
(01:33):
for the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps and and it
was a division of the Allied forces in World War 1, I think.
And it's also in the name of a biscuit which children use to
(01:56):
raise money in New Zealand and Australia today, which is very
delicious. But it's it's most famous for an
incident in World War 1. Have I got that right?
Gallipoli is, is, is World War One?
(02:18):
Yeah, that's right. Where the combined ANZAC forces
were sent in to a beach in Turkey, at Gallipoli, where the
number of soldiers who were killed was quite
disproportionate. And so both Australia and New
Zealand have a Memorial Day every year, so public holiday
(02:41):
every year called Anzac Day to commemorate the deaths at
Gallipoli, which is still very strongly supported.
A lot of Australians and New Zealanders go to Gallipoli Cove
every year to remember the dead,and there's a public holiday.
Certainly in the time I've livedin New Zealand, it's still
(03:03):
widely observed. Yeah.
So that's the sort of Anzac in popular culture reference that
some people might not have. That's right.
And we all have slightly different connections to Anzac
Day. And as you mentioned, there's
the biscuit, which is very delicious and I try and bake
each year. And a family story I have is
(03:27):
that we had a pet tortoise in our family who came from
Gallipoli and was by a soldier in the trenches.
His name, we named him Peter. And he lived in my family for
over 80 years and four generations.
He finally passed away in the mid 1990s when I was a teenager.
Yeah. So the Gallipoli landings were
(03:49):
special to me for that reason aswell, which is not related to
swimming, but I thought I would just add that in.
Yeah. So I mean, you very kindly
invited me onto your podcast to talk about the Anzac Day swim
that we run in Wellington. So again, cultural reference.
(04:12):
So Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand.
Wellington's at the bottom of the North Island of New Zealand
and it's famous in marathon swimming world because it's the
mouth of the Cook Straight. So the Cook Straight is one of
(04:33):
the Ocean 7 great transcontinental crossings which
everyone is getting very excitedabout around the world.
And this is a swim you have doneyourself.
I know so. Yes, yes, that's right, I was
#147 So there you go. Yeah.
Congratulations. That's awesome.
(04:54):
And yeah, so I might ask you a few questions about that after
if you're open to that. Yes, and.
Oh, and I participated in the Anzac Day swim last year.
I remember it was a bit blusteryand so it was moved to High Tide
Beach, which is just a little bit more sheltered from the
northerly. It was a great time.
(05:14):
It was a well organized event and I remember you gave a talk
at the beginning about Sir Bernard Freiburg.
It. Was sort of the the subject of
the. Memorial in, in, in, in
Wellington. So I mean, I should absolutely
confess to what a fraud I am being on your podcast.
(05:38):
The the idea of having a a swim on Anzac Day in Wellington
wasn't my idea. It was one of my friends from
the Triathlon Club. So this is Major Albie Rothman
and his now wife, Lieutenant Claire Kirby.
(05:58):
So at the time they were both serving soldiers and both of
them decided that it would be a great idea to commemorate the
special connection that we have in Wellington with Gallipoli and
Anzac through suburban Freiburg.And with enormous style, the two
(06:18):
of them decided to organise the first of our Anzac Day swims.
I think it was 2019, but it might have been even earlier
than that. So they got in touch with the
media. We had TVNZ and TV, three
cameras, both turned up and bothof them turned up in full dress.
(06:40):
Very, very smart. Alby did this wonderful speech
about Sir Bernard Freiburg at Gallipoli.
We had dozens of swimmers, we might have had over 100, and it
was on the national news on bothof the major channels that
evening. I can't find the footage.
It's obviously gone to him. So that's very sad.
Otherwise it would have been great to be able to point.
(07:03):
But it was terribly impressive and they told this incredible
story. So Sir Bernard Freiburg is quite
an important character in New Zealand history because he was
the first Governor General of New Zealand and our one of our
(07:24):
main swimming pools in Wellington is named after him.
And the pool is next to a beach which is where we started the
the first Anzac Day swim and where you didn't do your Anzac
Day swim last year because it's exposed to the predominant
northwesterly wind. And every single time the winds
(07:45):
strong there. It's incredibly rough and choppy
in the harbour, which is about 50% of the time.
But the reason that the pool andthe beach are named after
Bernard Freiburg is as well as having this very distinguished
career as Governor General and as a soldier, as we will hear,
when he was a schoolboy he was agreat swimmer and he grew up in
(08:10):
the suburb that overlooks the beach actually in in Rose Neath.
He actually grew up in Hawker St. which is one of the main
roads to the top of Mount Victoria, which is all very
domestic and local. He went to the local boys
school, Wellington College, and he was the New Zealand 100 yard
(08:32):
swimming champion, which was rather wonderful.
And he actually swam in the sameplace that the Friburg Pool has
now been built. But back then it was called the
Tiaro Baths and it was just an enclosure in the sea.
So it wasn't a swimming pool in the sense we think of it now.
It was just a bit sort of an enclosed bit of sea, an ocean
(08:57):
pool. That's right.
So these are very, very common in Australia and New Zealand in
the early 20th century. So very, very distinguished
swimmer in his own right. He was a pioneering surf
lifesaver. I didn't even know we had Surf
Life saving clubs over 100 yearsago, but he was a pioneering
(09:18):
member of the Lyell Bay Surf Life Saving Club.
So there you go. But he left school at 16 and did
an apprenticeship as a dentist in Lawrenceville, up in the
Waikato, and apparently hated it.
So he decided to join the army and got bored with that and
(09:42):
headed off to America to go and seek his fortune.
And one of the challenges I found with the Anzac Day swims
is to try and think of somethingnew to tell the swimmers every
year. So the story that Alby told
everyone back in 2019 is that hebriefly participated in the
(10:03):
Mexican Civil War and then went on to get involved in the in the
British forces supporting the campaigns in World War One.
So I'll come back to that later on because we found out more
about Freiburg's rather exotic history in the Mexican Civil War
last year. But I won't do.
(10:28):
Yeah. So having sort of meandered his
way seeking sort of stimulation in America, when World War One
broke, he tried to get his way to find passage in across the
Atlantic to get to the UK so that he could get involved in
(10:50):
the war and couldn't raise enough money.
So the story is that he won his passage in a bare knuckle boxing
fight in Harlem, won his fight, bought his ticket and then
arrived in England. And another story about Bernard
(11:10):
Freiburg's life is full of theseamazing stories.
So he apparently got enrolled inthe Royal Navy by accosting
Winston Churchill in the street.And Churchill was so impressed
that he introduced him and he became a company commander in
one of the battalions that woundup on the Gallipoli Peninsula
(11:33):
and were involved in the Operation Anzac Cove.
So this is where we come back toswimming.
And the story was that the the intention was that this
battalion would set off some distractionary flares and try
and draw the enemy forces away from the peninsula where the
(11:56):
main Gallipoli landings were intended to be.
And the idea was that boats would come ashore, they'd let
off the flares, and then they'd retreat.
But Freiburg decided that this was too risky and that the enemy
would see the boats, and that the plan wouldn't succeed.
So he announced that he was going to swim.
And so he covered himself in black sooty grease so that he
(12:21):
couldn't be seen and swam towinga little raft behind him with
all these flares, a light, a compass and a revolver rather.
And it's like a boy's own, you know, sort of story, this
amazing thing. He got to shore, lit flares in
(12:43):
three different places, swam back out away from the beach and
was picked up a couple of hours later having swam 3K or
something like that successfully.
Unfortunately didn't manage to prove the great distraction
given the tragedy at Anzac Cove,but it's an amazing story.
(13:07):
And I went. I suppose nobody was measuring
the water temperature, but it would have been pretty cold.
Well, somebody one year we did this, somebody who tried to find
out what the temperature had been the same day in Turkey that
we were doing the swim in Wellington and I think it was
almost identical. So oh, there you.
Go. Channelling the channelling the
(13:29):
same thing, Yeah. But he was, he was an amazing
guy. He won the Victoria Cross, he
won the Distinguished Service Order, the French Quoir Militaeo
de Guerre. He was mentioned in dispatches 6
times through his life and the end of the First World War.
(13:51):
Most people would have sort of decided that was enough when
World War 2 broke out. He was then involved in military
operations from the start to thefinish of the war and LED the
Second New Zealand ExpeditionaryForce.
So that was a big, big troop andof course as soon as he got back
he was knighted and then served 2 terms as the New Zealand
(14:15):
Governor General. So quite, quite an amazing bloke
really who we see every day really when we swim down at the
beach. There's even a a little picture
of him when you walk into the swimming pool and a little sort
of bored with all of his life achievements.
Brilliant, hasn't it? Like how he's remembered, you
know, a century later and how wehave this special tradition of
(14:39):
an annual Anzac Day swim becausewe have dawn ceremonies around
the country to commemorate the, you know, the the soldiers and
the fallen. But I like how there are
different ways of remembering war.
Yeah. And.
Something a bit different, isn'tit?
I mean, the other thing we've loved is, as I said, it's trying
to think of something new to sayevery year.
(15:02):
So, you know, we add the detailslike what the water temperature
was in Anzac Cove and so on and so on.
But last year, I was racking my brains trying to think what on
earth I could talk about, which wouldn't bore everyone rigid.
And I found an article that had been published by some military
historian that year. And the article is called
Debunking Freiburg's Mexico Myth, And I'm just going to read
(15:27):
it to you because it's it's really quite funny.
So I've told you the, you know, this amazing catalog of
adventures that the guy involvedhimself in.
And the summary of this academicarticle is military hero Bernard
Freiburg's illustrious career reads like an episode from the
Boy's Own Annual. His courage and command in the
(15:51):
two world wars made him a globalcelebrity, his adventurous aura
enhanced by his apparent serviceas a mercenary in the Mexican
Civil War in 1914. Even today, biographers proclaim
this participation as a fact, but in reality, he spent the
three months before the outbreakof war in California and left
(16:12):
for London from San Francisco. Freiburg himself appears to have
propagated the Mexican myth, notthe only time he played fast and
loose with facts about his earlylife.
Fake news. His early fake news.
Apparently the reason that this happened was that of course it
(16:34):
wasn't just before the Internet.This was before widespread use
of the wireless. So the main way that people got
their news about what was happening in other countries was
through newspapers and there wasoften quite a delay and often
quite muffled transmission of information as newspaper stories
travelled around the world. So the the story about his
(16:58):
involvement in the Mexican CivilWar was a newspaper article.
And the article said that he metGeneral Pancho Villa, one of the
opponents of the Mexican usurperHuerta.
And these were the two sides in the Mexican Civil War.
(17:19):
And about a year later there wasanother newspaper article that
added. Some time ago, he went out to
Mexico and offered his services to Huerta, but Huerta did not
want him and so he went and fought with Via on the opposite
side. And none of this was true.
And it was just, you know, messages getting mixed up and,
(17:42):
you know, you can read the article debunking Freiburg's
myth, which is on the Internet. Well, let's look to it in the
show notes. But the best bit about it was,
was rather than denying it, Freiburg clearly realised that
this was only only a great storyand there's nothing nothing
negative about publicity. And so encouraged the the myth
(18:05):
to grow. Yeah.
Very colorful character. And I noticed that you shared a
photo of him in the event on Facebook.
Yeah. Which was that?
At the saltwater baths. That is, that's actually Teoto
baths. That's right.
Yeah, so he's standing. I'll, I'll try and link to it in
the show notes as well. But he's standing in one of
(18:27):
those old fashioned men's bathing costumes and there's a
huge crowd behind him. It's a great photo.
Yep, Yep. Zoom in.
Zoom in on him. Yeah.
Maybe that should be the theme for another year.
We could get everyone to turn upin their early 20th century.
Swimming costume. Woollen.
Woollen net wear for swimming. Yeah, I, I was Googling this
(18:50):
morning to see if there were anyother heroic swims in history,
and one came up from John F Kennedy.
I don't know if you you're familiar with a story.
Yeah. Apparently in World War 2, he
was in a boat in the Pacific that was torpedoed by Japanese,
you know, planes. And he ended up swimming quite a
(19:11):
long distance to the nearest Pacific island, you know, saving
the lives of some of his crew. And then when they discovered
that island had no water, he swam to another Pacific island
nearby to collect some water andnot water, but food sources, and
brought it back and was creditedwith saving 10 lives and.
(19:31):
And is this true, Shona, or is this as true as Sir Bernard
Freiburg's involved? Oh, good question.
Well, I should reveal my sources, shouldn't I?
Yeah, well, I did check multiplesources.
I hope it's correct. And the other story I found was
there was a Maori woman in 1824 named Kahe Tero, or Terangi, who
(19:52):
swam from Kapati Island to the mainland.
You're familiar with that one? Yeah, with her baby daughter
strapped to her back. And so that's a distance of 11
kilometers, which and I've heardthat's a challenging swim.
I know some people who have doneit recreationally, let alone
with a a small child on their back.
(20:12):
It's very misleading. It has very, very strong
currents. And you probably know Vicky did
it the year before me and she said, oh, you'll be fine.
It's not very far. And so I, I don't know, I had a
jail or something like that on the boat.
And we got to about 300 metres from the shore and my supporter
said, oh, you know, would you want some nutrition?
(20:35):
And I said, Oh no, it's only 300metres.
You know, we'll be finished quite soon.
And I think 40 minutes later I'dliterally made no progress
because I was swimming into thiscurrent and I could see, see the
finish banner. And I was just swimming as hard
as I could, going absolutely nowhere.
If you stopped swimming you justgot swept right the way down the
(20:58):
beach. So it took a lot longer than we
were expecting so. Yes, I've heard that can be the
case as the distance as the crowflies.
And then there's the real distance that people swim on the
day, right? Absolutely.
I when I was reading about Bernard Freiburg, I saw that
there was a newspaper article about him attempting an English
(21:19):
Channel crossing as well. I don't know if if you're aware
of that and 1925 he almost made it and then I think the the
tides shifted as happens with yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll link to
that article as well. It looked legitimate and it said
that he didn't quite make it across which, so it's probably a
(21:40):
true story. Surprised it didn't get out.
It's funny actually, because we have the Anzac Day swim has been
so successful we we've now franchised it out to other New
Zealand public holidays. So the Anzac Day swim is the
sort of symbolic end of the openwater swimming season for
sensible people as we go from summer into winter, even though
(22:04):
half the community seem to swim all the way through the year
without a wet suit. But the official beginning of
the summer open water swimming season is Labour Weekend, which
is in October, and that's sort of when things are starting to
warm up. So we also have a Labour Weekend
commemorative swim and I decidedthat this year we were going to
(22:28):
have some stories. So I decided to look at how the
international labour movement and the Communist Party had been
involved in swimming. And I've heard loads of stories
about Chairman Mao, who apparently was a very, it's like
your Kennedy story really. Apparently he was a very keen
swimmer and there were all thesepropaganda stories about the
(22:51):
great Chairman Mao's swimming prowess.
And there was some stats and these stats were that he'd swam
5K at an average of, you know, one minute 100m pace, which
didn't really make it clear. This was in some massive river
like the Yangtze which has a very high flow rate and I think
an empty bag of chippies would have been able to swim at about
(23:12):
the IT. Would definitely help with
Spade. How do you find the task of
organising a public swim event? That's pretty, pretty
straightforward these days. Well, I've got great hopes.
I acknowledged I'll be guiding minds and mentors, so I'll be
(23:33):
still a serving soldier. And he and Claire were posted to
Fiji four or five years ago, which is why I wound up picking
up the responsibility of trying to run this thing.
But I'm sure his tour of duty isdue to finish soon, so I'm
(23:53):
expecting him to come back at some point and then he can take
over with all his charisma and flair and we'll probably have a
much better organised event. No, we're pretty slick now.
I think we have. A You're doing a great job.
So Speaking of heroic swims, I know that you've accomplished a
few marathon swims yourself. You swam across Lake Topol, is
(24:19):
that right? And that it's about 40
kilometers depending on currentsand wind.
I assume and. Straight you go.
And also the Cook Straight a couple of years ago and I've
heard your episodes from the Effortless Swimming podcast,
which I can also link to. But I was curious to know when
(24:42):
you started swimming in the ocean, like when did you join
the Wellington swimming community?
That's a good question. I've lived in New Zealand for 27
years now I think, and I I meantto get involved in triathlon
when I moved here and it took meabout 10 years to do that.
(25:08):
And part of triathlon in Wellington certainly is open
water swimming. So I suppose that's when I began
swimming comfortably in the sea and lakes.
And then I got mildly obsessive about Iron Man, which is a bit
of a it's about the closest thing to being a member of a
(25:29):
cult I think I've ever, ever signed up for.
And when I sort of got a bit burnt out with all of that, I
worked out that I was a much better swimmer than I was a
cyclist or a runner and quite enjoyed the, the culture.
I found the open water swimming scene not not just in New
(25:51):
Zealand, I think it's true everywhere actually is it's a
bit more relaxed than the triathlon scene.
Triathletes are quite, quite interested in numbers and
discipline and stuff like that. Open water swimmers a bit more
chill about these things. And I suppose, you know, you're
very influenced by your company.So we have a rather wonderful
(26:16):
squad who in in in the pool, in the Freiburg pool we were
talking about that's coached by a legend of not just New
Zealand, but world marathon swimming, Phil Rush.
So Phil is, is quite famous. I talk about him in the the
podcast that you were talking about quite a quite a bit.
(26:37):
But Phil's a bit older than me now.
And 35 years ago, Phil rather famously broke the speed record
for swimming the English Channel, turned round, swam
back, broke the two way record for swimming the English Channel
twice, turn around, swam back again, and broke the three-way
(26:59):
record for swimming the English Channel.
And his eternal regrets is that he didn't get in and swim back
for a fourth way because he probably would have had the
weather to pull it off. And they say how I'm putting you
on the spot here, but how long did it take him to swim the
triple crossing? It's embarrassing.
It's really quick. It's about 30 hours I think.
(27:22):
And he and the trouble about doing it for that long as you
have to go through turns of the tide and when the tide turns,
you don't go anywhere. You just have to keep swimming
going nowhere. I mean, the most amazing thing
about these records, So these are 35 years old, these records,
somebody's broken his one way record, but his two and
three-way records still stand. And some really great swimmers.
(27:46):
This is the English Channel, right?
This is the absolute Acme of world marathon swimming and no
one's even got close to breakingthem.
The most extraordinary fact we we had a moment in marathon
swimming would have been six or seven years ago when the
American swimmer Sarah Thomas did what Phil never managed to
(28:07):
do and swam the English Channel four ways.
And that's a record that may never be broken.
You need such a long period of good weather as well as the
right person and the right support team.
And the statistic is that when she finished her second crossing
of the English Channel, Phil hadalready finished his third
(28:27):
crossing. That's how fast he was swimming.
Unbelievable. And yeah, so he has this swim
squad, all my friends. And I think when I started
getting interested in it, there was about 130 people in history
had swum the cook straight and we had 15 people in the swim
squad who had swim the cook straight.
(28:48):
So I don't know you. It's.
A pretty high success rate. You think these things are
normal? Yeah.
That's right. And it's partly because it's
Wellington, right? So it's local from where we are.
And then the story is that Phil spends his summers supporting
international swimmers crossing the Cook Strait.
(29:09):
And when in 2020 New Zealand closed their borders because of
COVID, he marched into squad andhe said, well that's great, I've
got a completely full order bookfor next year and no one can get
in. So if any of you guys want to do
anything, this is probably the year.
And his system is that if you'venever done anything like that,
(29:33):
he gets you to swim the long axis of Lake Topor, which you
mentioned. So for our non local listeners,
Lake Topor is the hole in the doughnut that is the North
Island of New Zealand. So it's the cold air of a truly
enormous extinct volcano. Well, we hope it's extinct.
(29:54):
So the long axis is just over 40kilometres and you swim
diagonally across the lake in its furthest points.
And it's quite a good test because as a lake it doesn't
really have any currents. There's a couple of streams that
flow into it, but it's not like it's tidal or anything.
(30:14):
You only do it when the weather's all right, so you
don't really have to deal with terribly difficult conditions
and that's you're unlucky and it's a really long way.
So it's a very good test of whether you have the mental
strength or stubbornness or whatever to train for something
like that, and whether you have the mental strength and
(30:37):
stubbornness to be in your own head for what in my case was
just over 14 hours. And I think Phil's view is that
if you spend a season doing thatand you're successful, then
you'll probably be in a in a position to have a crack at Cook
Straight. The difference with the big
(30:58):
ocean swims is of course, dealing with the tides.
And the Cook Straight has a verylarge tidal range because the
it's a narrow gap between two enormous bodies of water.
So when the tide turns even as close as possible to low tide,
(31:18):
there's a sort of 2 to 3M tidal difference.
So that's what you're swimming against when the tide turns on
you. So you actually need to be able
to swim at about 3 kilometres anhour in the open water without a
wet suit in order to be able to make progress and get through.
Yeah. So I'd, I'd just assumed that
(31:39):
would be beyond me, but I got, Igot a lot faster through the
Lake Topol experience and we were still locked down in the
following year in 2022 as it was.
So I thought, well might as wellgive it a crack and did that.
(32:00):
And then I never got to swim because the weather, the way
these big ocean swims go is thatyou can only really attempt them
within two or three days of low tide.
So you have these little, what they call tide windows, but then
it's just a question of whether the weather behaves itself.
So it's if it's incredibly windy, it's not even worth
(32:22):
trying. And we'd had this gorgeous
summer and then as soon as we got into my tide window, the
weather went absolutely bananas.And so we didn't get to try it.
You wait two weeks for the next tide window.
Same thing happened again. And after three that must.
Be That must be quite challenging mentally as well.
You've psyched yourself up for this big swim and you have to
do. It Yeah, somebody said.
(32:44):
It's a little bit like, you know, sort of extreme
mountaineering where you know, where the climbers, they track
their way into the bottom of K2 or whatever and then they just
have to wait for the weather to come, right.
But they've got to keep themselves fit and active.
So it's quite different from like if you're running a
marathon or doing an Iron Man orsomething, you sort of know, you
(33:06):
know when you're meant to be doing it and you do all your
training and then you taper and then the day arrives and you do
your thing and then we're fine. Whereas with these swims, you do
all your training and you taper into your window and then you
sort of wait and then you suddenly get told it's not
happening. They have to start training
again. And then you have a week of that
and then you taper back into thenext window.
(33:28):
So it's like a sort of sore tooth that you're, you're
working your way through. But by the time we've been
through 4 weather window tide windows, it was really nice in
the season. So it was it was May and it was
starting to get really cold. And I remember I had this phone
call with Phil and he goes, right, mate, I'm not saying it's
(33:49):
not going to happen. And I thought, OK, here we go.
And he goes, we just need to think about risk.
And I'm not minced. You've spent enough time getting
cold. And I was like, OK.
And he was just trying to get meto tell him that I didn't think
I was ready to do it that late in the season.
I had this lovely summer doing all these fun things and
(34:12):
training with all my friends andhaving a nice time.
And I didn't even do the swim. And then the following year, we
started seeing the COVID restrictions being lifted.
And I thought, Oh well, might aswell give it another crack.
So yeah, So we picked a much earlier tide window this time.
(34:35):
I said, right, which is the warmest weekend of the year.
Let's go for that one. And that was the end of January
and two years ago. And yeah, and it just went like
clockwork, really sort of turnedup opt in, did my swim.
Yeah, you make it sound so easy.Opt in Did my swim sounds like
you're just sort of poodling around the fountain in oriental
(34:57):
pain. Oh, congratulations.
It's phenomenal. And I love the way you describe
the like topo swim as well as almost like a a test or a warm
up for the the cook straight because the like topo swim in
itself is a a phenomenal marathon swim.
Long way you should. There's some lovely interviews
with Phil floating around on theInternet where he talks about
(35:19):
his three-way English Channel crossing and he talks about
laps. He says, well, you know, it was
just after the first lap when you know I'd had something to
eat. So it's getting ready to get
stuck into the second lap, and that really does sound like he's
swimming around the fountain. You know this is like 7 or 8
hours of swimming and he just ticks them off 1 after another.
Yeah. Well, yeah, maybe that's the way
(35:40):
to approach it, right Mindset. It's just a little slim.
Yeah. Did you feel, you've probably
been asked this before, but did you feel different after the
completing these large swims? Like did you feel like your
relationship with the water had changed?
Was it hard to go back to just being a regular sort of weekend
(36:00):
swimmer again after you've done these marathons?
Not really. I find it's very tasky.
There's so much to do. And when you're doing it, you
know, a lot of the elite triathlon coaches talk about
process focus. You know, you're not really
focused on the outcome, you're just focused on what you're
doing and the execution. So it's very, that's what you're
(36:24):
absorbed in when you're when you're doing it.
So I didn't have some great spiritual epiphany when I sort
of finished or anything. In fact, when I finished the
cook straight, it got very swelly as I came in to the South
Island. Because you never really know
where you're going to wind up. I mean, it's a question of how
fast you swim and what the currents and tides are doing.
(36:44):
So I was just next to some random rocks with a Gannett
sitting on top of them. But it was the sea was moving a
lot. There was a lot of kelp, giant
seaweed, and, you know, it's getting quite rough.
And so I had no time to touch the rock and think enlightened
(37:05):
things about my changing relationship with the sea as
Phil was barking at me, telling me to get before I got smashed
to pieces by some unexpected wave.
And then, of course, you know, you swim up to the inflatable
boat that he's sitting in. You get hauled in rather
undignifiedly covered in grease,and then you get thrown onto the
(37:29):
launch wrapped up in blankets tostay warm.
And then you go into some sort of mild hypothermic shock.
So it's, it's not very glamorousreally.
You know, I'm sure you sort of watch movies about adventures
like this, and it looks like everyone's a complete hero.
There was no sort of swelling orchestral music playing as you
(37:49):
finished yourself. Yeah, but I bet it was a
wonderful journey. And, and in many ways, I mean, I
think it's the journey was as important as the, as the day
itself, you know, I mean, the fun we had getting ready, the
support I had from my friends, all these wonderful and had lots
of trips trying to make it interesting sort of go
(38:12):
travelling all over the country,in fact all over the world doing
interesting swims just to try and mix it up.
But the day itself was pretty, pretty special.
Yeah, I think said in one of theinterviews.
I got a text message from another famous Wellington
Marathon swimmer, Casey Glover. So Casey held the speed record
(38:34):
for swimming cook straight for nearly 20 years.
It was broken last year and and it's ridiculous.
It was like something 4 hours and 45 minutes or something
totally insane. And he sent me this text and it
said, if the winds on your side then surf across.
(38:57):
And it was like a sort of Harry Potter Horcrux puzzle.
And I was thinking, what on earth is he talking about that
one of my friends explained whathe was talking about.
And that was exactly what was going on.
We had the wind behind us, so I was meant to, you're meant to
get up out of the water. So the wind is at your back and
you're swimming over the top of the waves.
(39:18):
Yeah, so there. So even as a swim, it was, it
couldn't have been more different from the top or swim
because it was so varied, you know.
So we had two hours of that. Then you go into slack water,
that's different again. Then you have a steady period.
And then. And then we have these
upwellings where the water temperature drops very
dramatically. And yeah, exciting all the way.
(39:39):
You mentioned the the giant kelpat the end, Did you see any
other marine life on your swim? I had a.
Company with my dolphins and. I had a little dolphin came over
to say hi. Apparently the rest of his
family were talking to the main launch so I didn't see them, but
he came over and started talkingto me.
Little squeaks under the water. It's pretty special.
(40:00):
That's cool. Did you do you feel the need to
plan another marathon swim now? Or do you feel your you've done
enough? No, I'm sort of happy, I think.
I mean, there's this thing called the New Zealand Triple
Crown. So that's swimming across Lake
Taupo, Cook Straight and then Phovo Straight, which is between
(40:23):
Stewart Island, which is the third island of New Zealand at
the very southern tip of the South Island and the mainland.
And that is very, very cold and full of sharks and it doesn't
really appeal if I'm absolutely honest.
Maybe one day I will wake up andsuddenly have a drive to do
(40:43):
something else. We've had a few of the locals
have been pioneering really longswims in some of the southern
lakes in Central Otago over the last few years, which is quite
appealing. It's a lovely part of the
country that's pretty special. I mean, the Cook Straight
(41:04):
project was pretty special because it's Wellington and it's
a very much a part of my life. But similarly, like Wanaka, like
Wakatipu, you know, these are places you spend a lot of time,
but they're very cold except in unusually warm summers.
And there are really long lines.I think I'd need you.
(41:25):
You've got to want to do stuff like this.
It's not just a whimsical thing that you do, you know, just on
the on the off chance. Yeah.
There's a lot of preparation andtraining.
Preparation and training. You mentioned you're in Phil
Rush's squad, so what's the typical week of swimming for you
now and what's your swim routine?
(41:46):
Well I usually swim with squads 3 or 4 * a week, so twice with
Phil, twice with another squad and do a bit of swimming in the
harbour in the summer with people if it's a nice day.
When we swim at Freiburg we always go and jump in the jump
in the harbour afterwards and probably get as far as the
(42:07):
pontoon. That's about about the size of
it, but it's all pretty recreational at the moment.
Yeah, fair enough. And are you one of these people
who enjoys swimming at night andthe full moon?
I know there are a few full moongroups in Wellington.
Yeah, yeah, depending. There's one on Sunday, isn't
there? No, no.
Marina was giving me a hard timeabout it yesterday.
(42:27):
She was saying how come you never joined the Lunatics?
So no particular reason, it's just I never remember and
whenever I do I'm doing something else so I'm sure I'll
get there one day. Yeah.
Oh, well, thanks very much for coming on John and talking,
giving us a slice of swim history in Wellington.
Is there? Is there anything else you want
(42:47):
to talk about that we haven't already covered?
No, it's been fun. Look forward to hearing your
emerging series on swim history with the New Zealand Twist.
Thanks for listening to this. Episode of Swim Chats.
Please remember to follow or. Subscribe to the podcast so you
don't miss an episode and if youenjoyed it, you can leave a five
(43:09):
star rating and review which helps other people find it too.
Enjoy the water and we'll see you next time.
Welcome to the Swim Chats podcast.
I'm Shona Riddell, a writer, former journalist and ocean
swimmer from Wellington, Altiro and New Zealand.
For each episode, I'll feature adifferent guest from our swim
community. They'll be dippers.
Adventure swimmers, coaches and conservationists with one thing
in common. They all love being in the sea,
(00:24):
so whether you're a swimmer yourself or just interested in
stories about the ocean and people expanding their comfort
zones, I hope you enjoy these swim chats.
Please hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss an episode.
This is the first ever swim history episode that we've done
(00:44):
and in the history of this podcast, which has been running
a whole 2 weeks, it's very exciting.
And today we have a special guest, John Hancock, who is a
Wellington Ocean swimmer. I know you're a marathon
swimmer, John, as well and the organizer of our annual Anzac
Day swim. So welcome John to the show and
(01:11):
would you mind explaining to us exactly what an Anzac Day swim
is for people who? Don't.
Yeah. So you, you explained to me
before we started recording thatyou're aiming to build an
enormous international audience.That's right.
Will know what what an ANZAC is.So the acronym ANZAC, it stands
(01:33):
for the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps and and it
was a division of the Allied forces in World War 1, I think.
And it's also in the name of a biscuit which children use to
(01:56):
raise money in New Zealand and Australia today, which is very
delicious. But it's it's most famous for an
incident in World War 1. Have I got that right?
Gallipoli is, is, is World War One?
(02:18):
Yeah, that's right. Where the combined ANZAC forces
were sent in to a beach in Turkey, at Gallipoli, where the
number of soldiers who were killed was quite
disproportionate. And so both Australia and New
Zealand have a Memorial Day every year, so public holiday
(02:41):
every year called Anzac Day to commemorate the deaths at
Gallipoli, which is still very strongly supported.
A lot of Australians and New Zealanders go to Gallipoli Cove
every year to remember the dead,and there's a public holiday.
Certainly in the time I've livedin New Zealand, it's still
(03:03):
widely observed. Yeah.
So that's the sort of Anzac in popular culture reference that
some people might not have. That's right.
And we all have slightly different connections to Anzac
Day. And as you mentioned, there's
the biscuit, which is very delicious and I try and bake
each year. And a family story I have is
(03:27):
that we had a pet tortoise in our family who came from
Gallipoli and was by a soldier in the trenches.
His name, we named him Peter. And he lived in my family for
over 80 years and four generations.
He finally passed away in the mid 1990s when I was a teenager.
Yeah. So the Gallipoli landings were
(03:49):
special to me for that reason aswell, which is not related to
swimming, but I thought I would just add that in.
Yeah. So I mean, you very kindly
invited me onto your podcast to talk about the Anzac Day swim
that we run in Wellington. So again, cultural reference.
(04:12):
So Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand.
Wellington's at the bottom of the North Island of New Zealand
and it's famous in marathon swimming world because it's the
mouth of the Cook Straight. So the Cook Straight is one of
(04:33):
the Ocean 7 great transcontinental crossings which
everyone is getting very excitedabout around the world.
And this is a swim you have doneyourself.
I know so. Yes, yes, that's right, I was
#147 So there you go. Yeah.
Congratulations. That's awesome.
(04:54):
And yeah, so I might ask you a few questions about that after
if you're open to that. Yes, and.
Oh, and I participated in the Anzac Day swim last year.
I remember it was a bit blusteryand so it was moved to High Tide
Beach, which is just a little bit more sheltered from the
northerly. It was a great time.
(05:14):
It was a well organized event and I remember you gave a talk
at the beginning about Sir Bernard Freiburg.
It. Was sort of the the subject of
the. Memorial in, in, in, in
Wellington. So I mean, I should absolutely
confess to what a fraud I am being on your podcast.
(05:38):
The the idea of having a a swim on Anzac Day in Wellington
wasn't my idea. It was one of my friends from
the Triathlon Club. So this is Major Albie Rothman
and his now wife, Lieutenant Claire Kirby.
(05:58):
So at the time they were both serving soldiers and both of
them decided that it would be a great idea to commemorate the
special connection that we have in Wellington with Gallipoli and
Anzac through suburban Freiburg.And with enormous style, the two
(06:18):
of them decided to organise the first of our Anzac Day swims.
I think it was 2019, but it might have been even earlier
than that. So they got in touch with the
media. We had TVNZ and TV, three
cameras, both turned up and bothof them turned up in full dress.
(06:40):
Very, very smart. Alby did this wonderful speech
about Sir Bernard Freiburg at Gallipoli.
We had dozens of swimmers, we might have had over 100, and it
was on the national news on bothof the major channels that
evening. I can't find the footage.
It's obviously gone to him. So that's very sad.
Otherwise it would have been great to be able to point.
(07:03):
But it was terribly impressive and they told this incredible
story. So Sir Bernard Freiburg is quite
an important character in New Zealand history because he was
the first Governor General of New Zealand and our one of our
(07:24):
main swimming pools in Wellington is named after him.
And the pool is next to a beach which is where we started the
the first Anzac Day swim and where you didn't do your Anzac
Day swim last year because it's exposed to the predominant
northwesterly wind. And every single time the winds
(07:45):
strong there. It's incredibly rough and choppy
in the harbour, which is about 50% of the time.
But the reason that the pool andthe beach are named after
Bernard Freiburg is as well as having this very distinguished
career as Governor General and as a soldier, as we will hear,
when he was a schoolboy he was agreat swimmer and he grew up in
(08:10):
the suburb that overlooks the beach actually in in Rose Neath.
He actually grew up in Hawker St. which is one of the main
roads to the top of Mount Victoria, which is all very
domestic and local. He went to the local boys
school, Wellington College, and he was the New Zealand 100 yard
(08:32):
swimming champion, which was rather wonderful.
And he actually swam in the sameplace that the Friburg Pool has
now been built. But back then it was called the
Tiaro Baths and it was just an enclosure in the sea.
So it wasn't a swimming pool in the sense we think of it now.
It was just a bit sort of an enclosed bit of sea, an ocean
(08:57):
pool. That's right.
So these are very, very common in Australia and New Zealand in
the early 20th century. So very, very distinguished
swimmer in his own right. He was a pioneering surf
lifesaver. I didn't even know we had Surf
Life saving clubs over 100 yearsago, but he was a pioneering
(09:18):
member of the Lyell Bay Surf Life Saving Club.
So there you go. But he left school at 16 and did
an apprenticeship as a dentist in Lawrenceville, up in the
Waikato, and apparently hated it.
So he decided to join the army and got bored with that and
(09:42):
headed off to America to go and seek his fortune.
And one of the challenges I found with the Anzac Day swims
is to try and think of somethingnew to tell the swimmers every
year. So the story that Alby told
everyone back in 2019 is that hebriefly participated in the
(10:03):
Mexican Civil War and then went on to get involved in the in the
British forces supporting the campaigns in World War One.
So I'll come back to that later on because we found out more
about Freiburg's rather exotic history in the Mexican Civil War
last year. But I won't do.
(10:28):
Yeah. So having sort of meandered his
way seeking sort of stimulation in America, when World War One
broke, he tried to get his way to find passage in across the
Atlantic to get to the UK so that he could get involved in
(10:50):
the war and couldn't raise enough money.
So the story is that he won his passage in a bare knuckle boxing
fight in Harlem, won his fight, bought his ticket and then
arrived in England. And another story about Bernard
(11:10):
Freiburg's life is full of theseamazing stories.
So he apparently got enrolled inthe Royal Navy by accosting
Winston Churchill in the street.And Churchill was so impressed
that he introduced him and he became a company commander in
one of the battalions that woundup on the Gallipoli Peninsula
(11:33):
and were involved in the Operation Anzac Cove.
So this is where we come back toswimming.
And the story was that the the intention was that this
battalion would set off some distractionary flares and try
and draw the enemy forces away from the peninsula where the
(11:56):
main Gallipoli landings were intended to be.
And the idea was that boats would come ashore, they'd let
off the flares, and then they'd retreat.
But Freiburg decided that this was too risky and that the enemy
would see the boats, and that the plan wouldn't succeed.
So he announced that he was going to swim.
And so he covered himself in black sooty grease so that he
(12:21):
couldn't be seen and swam towinga little raft behind him with
all these flares, a light, a compass and a revolver rather.
And it's like a boy's own, you know, sort of story, this
amazing thing. He got to shore, lit flares in
(12:43):
three different places, swam back out away from the beach and
was picked up a couple of hours later having swam 3K or
something like that successfully.
Unfortunately didn't manage to prove the great distraction
given the tragedy at Anzac Cove,but it's an amazing story.
(13:07):
And I went. I suppose nobody was measuring
the water temperature, but it would have been pretty cold.
Well, somebody one year we did this, somebody who tried to find
out what the temperature had been the same day in Turkey that
we were doing the swim in Wellington and I think it was
almost identical. So oh, there you.
Go. Channelling the channelling the
(13:29):
same thing, Yeah. But he was, he was an amazing
guy. He won the Victoria Cross, he
won the Distinguished Service Order, the French Quoir Militaeo
de Guerre. He was mentioned in dispatches 6
times through his life and the end of the First World War.
(13:51):
Most people would have sort of decided that was enough when
World War 2 broke out. He was then involved in military
operations from the start to thefinish of the war and LED the
Second New Zealand ExpeditionaryForce.
So that was a big, big troop andof course as soon as he got back
he was knighted and then served 2 terms as the New Zealand
(14:15):
Governor General. So quite, quite an amazing bloke
really who we see every day really when we swim down at the
beach. There's even a a little picture
of him when you walk into the swimming pool and a little sort
of bored with all of his life achievements.
Brilliant, hasn't it? Like how he's remembered, you
know, a century later and how wehave this special tradition of
(14:39):
an annual Anzac Day swim becausewe have dawn ceremonies around
the country to commemorate the, you know, the the soldiers and
the fallen. But I like how there are
different ways of remembering war.
Yeah. And.
Something a bit different, isn'tit?
I mean, the other thing we've loved is, as I said, it's trying
to think of something new to sayevery year.
(15:02):
So, you know, we add the detailslike what the water temperature
was in Anzac Cove and so on and so on.
But last year, I was racking my brains trying to think what on
earth I could talk about, which wouldn't bore everyone rigid.
And I found an article that had been published by some military
historian that year. And the article is called
Debunking Freiburg's Mexico Myth, And I'm just going to read
(15:27):
it to you because it's it's really quite funny.
So I've told you the, you know, this amazing catalog of
adventures that the guy involvedhimself in.
And the summary of this academicarticle is military hero Bernard
Freiburg's illustrious career reads like an episode from the
Boy's Own Annual. His courage and command in the
(15:51):
two world wars made him a globalcelebrity, his adventurous aura
enhanced by his apparent serviceas a mercenary in the Mexican
Civil War in 1914. Even today, biographers proclaim
this participation as a fact, but in reality, he spent the
three months before the outbreakof war in California and left
(16:12):
for London from San Francisco. Freiburg himself appears to have
propagated the Mexican myth, notthe only time he played fast and
loose with facts about his earlylife.
Fake news. His early fake news.
Apparently the reason that this happened was that of course it
(16:34):
wasn't just before the Internet.This was before widespread use
of the wireless. So the main way that people got
their news about what was happening in other countries was
through newspapers and there wasoften quite a delay and often
quite muffled transmission of information as newspaper stories
travelled around the world. So the the story about his
(16:58):
involvement in the Mexican CivilWar was a newspaper article.
And the article said that he metGeneral Pancho Villa, one of the
opponents of the Mexican usurperHuerta.
And these were the two sides in the Mexican Civil War.
(17:19):
And about a year later there wasanother newspaper article that
added. Some time ago, he went out to
Mexico and offered his services to Huerta, but Huerta did not
want him and so he went and fought with Via on the opposite
side. And none of this was true.
And it was just, you know, messages getting mixed up and,
(17:42):
you know, you can read the article debunking Freiburg's
myth, which is on the Internet. Well, let's look to it in the
show notes. But the best bit about it was,
was rather than denying it, Freiburg clearly realised that
this was only only a great storyand there's nothing nothing
negative about publicity. And so encouraged the the myth
(18:05):
to grow. Yeah.
Very colorful character. And I noticed that you shared a
photo of him in the event on Facebook.
Yeah. Which was that?
At the saltwater baths. That is, that's actually Teoto
baths. That's right.
Yeah, so he's standing. I'll, I'll try and link to it in
the show notes as well. But he's standing in one of
(18:27):
those old fashioned men's bathing costumes and there's a
huge crowd behind him. It's a great photo.
Yep, Yep. Zoom in.
Zoom in on him. Yeah.
Maybe that should be the theme for another year.
We could get everyone to turn upin their early 20th century.
Swimming costume. Woollen.
Woollen net wear for swimming. Yeah, I, I was Googling this
(18:50):
morning to see if there were anyother heroic swims in history,
and one came up from John F Kennedy.
I don't know if you you're familiar with a story.
Yeah. Apparently in World War 2, he
was in a boat in the Pacific that was torpedoed by Japanese,
you know, planes. And he ended up swimming quite a
(19:11):
long distance to the nearest Pacific island, you know, saving
the lives of some of his crew. And then when they discovered
that island had no water, he swam to another Pacific island
nearby to collect some water andnot water, but food sources, and
brought it back and was creditedwith saving 10 lives and.
(19:31):
And is this true, Shona, or is this as true as Sir Bernard
Freiburg's involved? Oh, good question.
Well, I should reveal my sources, shouldn't I?
Yeah, well, I did check multiplesources.
I hope it's correct. And the other story I found was
there was a Maori woman in 1824 named Kahe Tero, or Terangi, who
(19:52):
swam from Kapati Island to the mainland.
You're familiar with that one? Yeah, with her baby daughter
strapped to her back. And so that's a distance of 11
kilometers, which and I've heardthat's a challenging swim.
I know some people who have doneit recreationally, let alone
with a a small child on their back.
(20:12):
It's very misleading. It has very, very strong
currents. And you probably know Vicky did
it the year before me and she said, oh, you'll be fine.
It's not very far. And so I, I don't know, I had a
jail or something like that on the boat.
And we got to about 300 metres from the shore and my supporter
said, oh, you know, would you want some nutrition?
(20:35):
And I said, Oh no, it's only 300metres.
You know, we'll be finished quite soon.
And I think 40 minutes later I'dliterally made no progress
because I was swimming into thiscurrent and I could see, see the
finish banner. And I was just swimming as hard
as I could, going absolutely nowhere.
If you stopped swimming you justgot swept right the way down the
(20:58):
beach. So it took a lot longer than we
were expecting so. Yes, I've heard that can be the
case as the distance as the crowflies.
And then there's the real distance that people swim on the
day, right? Absolutely.
I when I was reading about Bernard Freiburg, I saw that
there was a newspaper article about him attempting an English
(21:19):
Channel crossing as well. I don't know if if you're aware
of that and 1925 he almost made it and then I think the the
tides shifted as happens with yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll link to
that article as well. It looked legitimate and it said
that he didn't quite make it across which, so it's probably a
(21:40):
true story. Surprised it didn't get out.
It's funny actually, because we have the Anzac Day swim has been
so successful we we've now franchised it out to other New
Zealand public holidays. So the Anzac Day swim is the
sort of symbolic end of the openwater swimming season for
sensible people as we go from summer into winter, even though
(22:04):
half the community seem to swim all the way through the year
without a wet suit. But the official beginning of
the summer open water swimming season is Labour Weekend, which
is in October, and that's sort of when things are starting to
warm up. So we also have a Labour Weekend
commemorative swim and I decidedthat this year we were going to
(22:28):
have some stories. So I decided to look at how the
international labour movement and the Communist Party had been
involved in swimming. And I've heard loads of stories
about Chairman Mao, who apparently was a very, it's like
your Kennedy story really. Apparently he was a very keen
swimmer and there were all thesepropaganda stories about the
(22:51):
great Chairman Mao's swimming prowess.
And there was some stats and these stats were that he'd swam
5K at an average of, you know, one minute 100m pace, which
didn't really make it clear. This was in some massive river
like the Yangtze which has a very high flow rate and I think
an empty bag of chippies would have been able to swim at about
(23:12):
the IT. Would definitely help with
Spade. How do you find the task of
organising a public swim event? That's pretty, pretty
straightforward these days. Well, I've got great hopes.
I acknowledged I'll be guiding minds and mentors, so I'll be
(23:33):
still a serving soldier. And he and Claire were posted to
Fiji four or five years ago, which is why I wound up picking
up the responsibility of trying to run this thing.
But I'm sure his tour of duty isdue to finish soon, so I'm
(23:53):
expecting him to come back at some point and then he can take
over with all his charisma and flair and we'll probably have a
much better organised event. No, we're pretty slick now.
I think we have. A You're doing a great job.
So Speaking of heroic swims, I know that you've accomplished a
few marathon swims yourself. You swam across Lake Topol, is
(24:19):
that right? And that it's about 40
kilometers depending on currentsand wind.
I assume and. Straight you go.
And also the Cook Straight a couple of years ago and I've
heard your episodes from the Effortless Swimming podcast,
which I can also link to. But I was curious to know when
(24:42):
you started swimming in the ocean, like when did you join
the Wellington swimming community?
That's a good question. I've lived in New Zealand for 27
years now I think, and I I meantto get involved in triathlon
when I moved here and it took meabout 10 years to do that.
(25:08):
And part of triathlon in Wellington certainly is open
water swimming. So I suppose that's when I began
swimming comfortably in the sea and lakes.
And then I got mildly obsessive about Iron Man, which is a bit
of a it's about the closest thing to being a member of a
(25:29):
cult I think I've ever, ever signed up for.
And when I sort of got a bit burnt out with all of that, I
worked out that I was a much better swimmer than I was a
cyclist or a runner and quite enjoyed the, the culture.
I found the open water swimming scene not not just in New
(25:51):
Zealand, I think it's true everywhere actually is it's a
bit more relaxed than the triathlon scene.
Triathletes are quite, quite interested in numbers and
discipline and stuff like that. Open water swimmers a bit more
chill about these things. And I suppose, you know, you're
very influenced by your company.So we have a rather wonderful
(26:16):
squad who in in in the pool, in the Freiburg pool we were
talking about that's coached by a legend of not just New
Zealand, but world marathon swimming, Phil Rush.
So Phil is, is quite famous. I talk about him in the the
podcast that you were talking about quite a quite a bit.
(26:37):
But Phil's a bit older than me now.
And 35 years ago, Phil rather famously broke the speed record
for swimming the English Channel, turned round, swam
back, broke the two way record for swimming the English Channel
twice, turn around, swam back again, and broke the three-way
(26:59):
record for swimming the English Channel.
And his eternal regrets is that he didn't get in and swim back
for a fourth way because he probably would have had the
weather to pull it off. And they say how I'm putting you
on the spot here, but how long did it take him to swim the
triple crossing? It's embarrassing.
It's really quick. It's about 30 hours I think.
(27:22):
And he and the trouble about doing it for that long as you
have to go through turns of the tide and when the tide turns,
you don't go anywhere. You just have to keep swimming
going nowhere. I mean, the most amazing thing
about these records, So these are 35 years old, these records,
somebody's broken his one way record, but his two and
three-way records still stand. And some really great swimmers.
(27:46):
This is the English Channel, right?
This is the absolute Acme of world marathon swimming and no
one's even got close to breakingthem.
The most extraordinary fact we we had a moment in marathon
swimming would have been six or seven years ago when the
American swimmer Sarah Thomas did what Phil never managed to
(28:07):
do and swam the English Channel four ways.
And that's a record that may never be broken.
You need such a long period of good weather as well as the
right person and the right support team.
And the statistic is that when she finished her second crossing
of the English Channel, Phil hadalready finished his third
(28:27):
crossing. That's how fast he was swimming.
Unbelievable. And yeah, so he has this swim
squad, all my friends. And I think when I started
getting interested in it, there was about 130 people in history
had swum the cook straight and we had 15 people in the swim
squad who had swim the cook straight.
(28:48):
So I don't know you. It's.
A pretty high success rate. You think these things are
normal? Yeah.
That's right. And it's partly because it's
Wellington, right? So it's local from where we are.
And then the story is that Phil spends his summers supporting
international swimmers crossing the Cook Strait.
(29:09):
And when in 2020 New Zealand closed their borders because of
COVID, he marched into squad andhe said, well that's great, I've
got a completely full order bookfor next year and no one can get
in. So if any of you guys want to do
anything, this is probably the year.
And his system is that if you'venever done anything like that,
(29:33):
he gets you to swim the long axis of Lake Topor, which you
mentioned. So for our non local listeners,
Lake Topor is the hole in the doughnut that is the North
Island of New Zealand. So it's the cold air of a truly
enormous extinct volcano. Well, we hope it's extinct.
(29:54):
So the long axis is just over 40kilometres and you swim
diagonally across the lake in its furthest points.
And it's quite a good test because as a lake it doesn't
really have any currents. There's a couple of streams that
flow into it, but it's not like it's tidal or anything.
(30:14):
You only do it when the weather's all right, so you
don't really have to deal with terribly difficult conditions
and that's you're unlucky and it's a really long way.
So it's a very good test of whether you have the mental
strength or stubbornness or whatever to train for something
like that, and whether you have the mental strength and
(30:37):
stubbornness to be in your own head for what in my case was
just over 14 hours. And I think Phil's view is that
if you spend a season doing thatand you're successful, then
you'll probably be in a in a position to have a crack at Cook
Straight. The difference with the big
(30:58):
ocean swims is of course, dealing with the tides.
And the Cook Straight has a verylarge tidal range because the
it's a narrow gap between two enormous bodies of water.
So when the tide turns even as close as possible to low tide,
(31:18):
there's a sort of 2 to 3M tidal difference.
So that's what you're swimming against when the tide turns on
you. So you actually need to be able
to swim at about 3 kilometres anhour in the open water without a
wet suit in order to be able to make progress and get through.
Yeah. So I'd, I'd just assumed that
(31:39):
would be beyond me, but I got, Igot a lot faster through the
Lake Topol experience and we were still locked down in the
following year in 2022 as it was.
So I thought, well might as wellgive it a crack and did that.
(32:00):
And then I never got to swim because the weather, the way
these big ocean swims go is thatyou can only really attempt them
within two or three days of low tide.
So you have these little, what they call tide windows, but then
it's just a question of whether the weather behaves itself.
So it's if it's incredibly windy, it's not even worth
(32:22):
trying. And we'd had this gorgeous
summer and then as soon as we got into my tide window, the
weather went absolutely bananas.And so we didn't get to try it.
You wait two weeks for the next tide window.
Same thing happened again. And after three that must.
Be That must be quite challenging mentally as well.
You've psyched yourself up for this big swim and you have to
do. It Yeah, somebody said.
(32:44):
It's a little bit like, you know, sort of extreme
mountaineering where you know, where the climbers, they track
their way into the bottom of K2 or whatever and then they just
have to wait for the weather to come, right.
But they've got to keep themselves fit and active.
So it's quite different from like if you're running a
marathon or doing an Iron Man orsomething, you sort of know, you
(33:06):
know when you're meant to be doing it and you do all your
training and then you taper and then the day arrives and you do
your thing and then we're fine. Whereas with these swims, you do
all your training and you taper into your window and then you
sort of wait and then you suddenly get told it's not
happening. They have to start training
again. And then you have a week of that
and then you taper back into thenext window.
(33:28):
So it's like a sort of sore tooth that you're, you're
working your way through. But by the time we've been
through 4 weather window tide windows, it was really nice in
the season. So it was it was May and it was
starting to get really cold. And I remember I had this phone
call with Phil and he goes, right, mate, I'm not saying it's
(33:49):
not going to happen. And I thought, OK, here we go.
And he goes, we just need to think about risk.
And I'm not minced. You've spent enough time getting
cold. And I was like, OK.
And he was just trying to get meto tell him that I didn't think
I was ready to do it that late in the season.
I had this lovely summer doing all these fun things and
(34:12):
training with all my friends andhaving a nice time.
And I didn't even do the swim. And then the following year, we
started seeing the COVID restrictions being lifted.
And I thought, Oh well, might aswell give it another crack.
So yeah, So we picked a much earlier tide window this time.
(34:35):
I said, right, which is the warmest weekend of the year.
Let's go for that one. And that was the end of January
and two years ago. And yeah, and it just went like
clockwork, really sort of turnedup opt in, did my swim.
Yeah, you make it sound so easy.Opt in Did my swim sounds like
you're just sort of poodling around the fountain in oriental
(34:57):
pain. Oh, congratulations.
It's phenomenal. And I love the way you describe
the like topo swim as well as almost like a a test or a warm
up for the the cook straight because the like topo swim in
itself is a a phenomenal marathon swim.
Long way you should. There's some lovely interviews
with Phil floating around on theInternet where he talks about
(35:19):
his three-way English Channel crossing and he talks about
laps. He says, well, you know, it was
just after the first lap when you know I'd had something to
eat. So it's getting ready to get
stuck into the second lap, and that really does sound like he's
swimming around the fountain. You know this is like 7 or 8
hours of swimming and he just ticks them off 1 after another.
Yeah. Well, yeah, maybe that's the way
(35:40):
to approach it, right Mindset. It's just a little slim.
Yeah. Did you feel, you've probably
been asked this before, but did you feel different after the
completing these large swims? Like did you feel like your
relationship with the water had changed?
Was it hard to go back to just being a regular sort of weekend
(36:00):
swimmer again after you've done these marathons?
Not really. I find it's very tasky.
There's so much to do. And when you're doing it, you
know, a lot of the elite triathlon coaches talk about
process focus. You know, you're not really
focused on the outcome, you're just focused on what you're
doing and the execution. So it's very, that's what you're
(36:24):
absorbed in when you're when you're doing it.
So I didn't have some great spiritual epiphany when I sort
of finished or anything. In fact, when I finished the
cook straight, it got very swelly as I came in to the South
Island. Because you never really know
where you're going to wind up. I mean, it's a question of how
fast you swim and what the currents and tides are doing.
(36:44):
So I was just next to some random rocks with a Gannett
sitting on top of them. But it was the sea was moving a
lot. There was a lot of kelp, giant
seaweed, and, you know, it's getting quite rough.
And so I had no time to touch the rock and think enlightened
(37:05):
things about my changing relationship with the sea as
Phil was barking at me, telling me to get before I got smashed
to pieces by some unexpected wave.
And then, of course, you know, you swim up to the inflatable
boat that he's sitting in. You get hauled in rather
undignifiedly covered in grease,and then you get thrown onto the
(37:29):
launch wrapped up in blankets tostay warm.
And then you go into some sort of mild hypothermic shock.
So it's, it's not very glamorousreally.
You know, I'm sure you sort of watch movies about adventures
like this, and it looks like everyone's a complete hero.
There was no sort of swelling orchestral music playing as you
(37:49):
finished yourself. Yeah, but I bet it was a
wonderful journey. And, and in many ways, I mean, I
think it's the journey was as important as the, as the day
itself, you know, I mean, the fun we had getting ready, the
support I had from my friends, all these wonderful and had lots
of trips trying to make it interesting sort of go
(38:12):
travelling all over the country,in fact all over the world doing
interesting swims just to try and mix it up.
But the day itself was pretty, pretty special.
Yeah, I think said in one of theinterviews.
I got a text message from another famous Wellington
Marathon swimmer, Casey Glover. So Casey held the speed record
(38:34):
for swimming cook straight for nearly 20 years.
It was broken last year and and it's ridiculous.
It was like something 4 hours and 45 minutes or something
totally insane. And he sent me this text and it
said, if the winds on your side then surf across.
(38:57):
And it was like a sort of Harry Potter Horcrux puzzle.
And I was thinking, what on earth is he talking about that
one of my friends explained whathe was talking about.
And that was exactly what was going on.
We had the wind behind us, so I was meant to, you're meant to
get up out of the water. So the wind is at your back and
you're swimming over the top of the waves.
(39:18):
Yeah, so there. So even as a swim, it was, it
couldn't have been more different from the top or swim
because it was so varied, you know.
So we had two hours of that. Then you go into slack water,
that's different again. Then you have a steady period.
And then. And then we have these
upwellings where the water temperature drops very
dramatically. And yeah, exciting all the way.
(39:39):
You mentioned the the giant kelpat the end, Did you see any
other marine life on your swim? I had a.
Company with my dolphins and. I had a little dolphin came over
to say hi. Apparently the rest of his
family were talking to the main launch so I didn't see them, but
he came over and started talkingto me.
Little squeaks under the water. It's pretty special.
(40:00):
That's cool. Did you do you feel the need to
plan another marathon swim now? Or do you feel your you've done
enough? No, I'm sort of happy, I think.
I mean, there's this thing called the New Zealand Triple
Crown. So that's swimming across Lake
Taupo, Cook Straight and then Phovo Straight, which is between
(40:23):
Stewart Island, which is the third island of New Zealand at
the very southern tip of the South Island and the mainland.
And that is very, very cold and full of sharks and it doesn't
really appeal if I'm absolutely honest.
Maybe one day I will wake up andsuddenly have a drive to do
(40:43):
something else. We've had a few of the locals
have been pioneering really longswims in some of the southern
lakes in Central Otago over the last few years, which is quite
appealing. It's a lovely part of the
country that's pretty special. I mean, the Cook Straight
(41:04):
project was pretty special because it's Wellington and it's
a very much a part of my life. But similarly, like Wanaka, like
Wakatipu, you know, these are places you spend a lot of time,
but they're very cold except in unusually warm summers.
And there are really long lines.I think I'd need you.
(41:25):
You've got to want to do stuff like this.
It's not just a whimsical thing that you do, you know, just on
the on the off chance. Yeah.
There's a lot of preparation andtraining.
Preparation and training. You mentioned you're in Phil
Rush's squad, so what's the typical week of swimming for you
now and what's your swim routine?
(41:46):
Well I usually swim with squads 3 or 4 * a week, so twice with
Phil, twice with another squad and do a bit of swimming in the
harbour in the summer with people if it's a nice day.
When we swim at Freiburg we always go and jump in the jump
in the harbour afterwards and probably get as far as the
(42:07):
pontoon. That's about about the size of
it, but it's all pretty recreational at the moment.
Yeah, fair enough. And are you one of these people
who enjoys swimming at night andthe full moon?
I know there are a few full moongroups in Wellington.
Yeah, yeah, depending. There's one on Sunday, isn't
there? No, no.
Marina was giving me a hard timeabout it yesterday.
(42:27):
She was saying how come you never joined the Lunatics?
So no particular reason, it's just I never remember and
whenever I do I'm doing something else so I'm sure I'll
get there one day. Yeah.
Oh, well, thanks very much for coming on John and talking,
giving us a slice of swim history in Wellington.
Is there? Is there anything else you want
(42:47):
to talk about that we haven't already covered?
No, it's been fun. Look forward to hearing your
emerging series on swim history with the New Zealand Twist.
Thanks for listening to this. Episode of Swim Chats.
Please remember to follow or. Subscribe to the podcast so you
don't miss an episode and if youenjoyed it, you can leave a five
(43:09):
star rating and review which helps other people find it too.
Enjoy the water and we'll see you next time.
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