Hellespont race report

All – I hope you are very well. Back in August I just about managed to swim from Europe to Asia across the Hellespont. I’ve finally got around to sorting out the competition winners and hoped that you would be interested in:

· The race report from Çanakkale
· The winner of the Lord Bryon poetry competition
· The *** shock result ***of the Greatest Asian Explorer poll
· Sponsoring Guide Dogs for the Blind

Guide dogs received no government funding. It costs 40k to train a dog and I would be grateful of any donation – great or small. Many thanks to the people who have already donated more than £1,400.


Race Report

I have often thought that the safety briefings for this type of event can be more physically and mentally challenging that the race itself. The organising panel consisted of seven serious looking Turkish Rotary members who convened a “mandatory” two hour briefing at the local university. The scene was somewhat reminiscent of the UN. Clearly unwilling to establish a hierarchy among the committee members, we were treated to broadly the same speech seven times. Personally I would have opted for one who spoke English, but perhaps that’s why I am not a diplomat.

The only interesting part of the briefing concerned the tides and current in the Hellespont. Apparently the currents would be very strong. “If you don’t follow the boat with balloons on top, you will be washed away. Ha ha ha!” said the one who looked a bit a cross between like Colonel Gaddafi and Bob Dylan. “This happened to lots of people last year”, he concluded, looking unreasonably pleased at the idea.

As an additional part of the comical health and safety regime, swimmers were required then to undergo a “medical”. The rigour of this procedure varied considerably based on gender. Male swimmers were passed as fit based on their ability to stand up and generally appear alive, whilst female swimmers required close inspection of their chest with a stethoscope in a private room.

Anyway, the next morning the field of 414 swimmers arrived at the starting beach to be presented with a large fleet of boats with no balloons at all. I concluded that the Turkish version of Woolworths must have also gone bankrupt, and it is of course much harder to buy balloons in the post-financial crisis world. Overnight the wind had also picked up considerably and was gusting force 5: quite a big sea, normally described as “lumpy” by swimmers. The English organiser attempted to tell the foreign swimmers that it was too dangerous to attempt, but frankly the assembled Australians weren’t very interested in listening to that, and in the melee a Turkish boat started firing off flares which the field took to signal the start.

The field departed the shore and very soon I could see swimmers being pulled into safety boats. It was far too choppy to see properly, and I wondered where I might finish up. The assembled safety boats became a liability and I started to wish that my Turkish phrase book contained the translation for “Please could you move your large propeller a little further away from my ankles, Giuseppe”.

After an hour or more the coast came into sight. I could feel the tide and current ripping down the coast line and managed to sprint into the shore finishing a rather poor 9th place in my age group. More than 200 people missed the end point all together and were picked up miles downstream – a completion rate of only 50%. To my delight a Turkish chap (long arms, short legs) overturned the Australian favourites to win the race by several minutes: a fitting result on the Turkish Victory day.

Deakin.
http://www.justgiving.com/DeakinHellespont

http://robdeakin.blogspot.com/

With thanks to: Swim trek, the Turkish Rotary Club, Freda Streeter, Chrissie Thirlwell, Sean Dilley, Nick Adams, Clifford Golding, Barrie and Irene