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Westvilles Chad Ho, 22, made history when he became the first man to win four consecutive Midmar Mile titles yesterday. Meanwhile Ashley Twichell, 23, also made history when she became the first American to win the womens title. Pictures: Terry Haywood
Tommy Ballantyne
THE 40th anniversary of the Midmar Mile, held over the weekend at the popular Midlands resort, may well be remembered more for the chaos that resulted on the first day, when over 1 000 of the microchips used to record each individual swimmer’s time somehow ended up at the bottom of the dam, than for the swim itself, which was one of the safest and most trouble-free in its history.
Wayne Riddin, events director of what has become known as the biggest open water event in the world, said the cause of the problem was traced to the straps used to attach the microchips to the leg.
“The chip straps proved inadequate,” said Riddin, “with hundreds coming adrift.
“The result was that those swimmers who lost their chips were unable to be given an official time for their respective races.
Ashley Twichell
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“Fortunately we were able to use a back-up system with barcodes, which were also issued to each swimmer at registration, and to extrapolate times from them using times from swimmers who did have their times recorded using their microchips.”
Riddin said that as a result of the microchip problem the computer people had worked overtime to sort out the missing times and this had led to costly delays.
There would still be some delay before the official results were posted on the event website.
On the brighter side was the news that the aggregate number of swimmers who successfully completed this year’s eight-race regatta, spread over two days, had exceeded the event’s own world record mark of 13 755 finishers set in 2009 and approved by Guinness World Records.
Riddin confirmed that the final number of finishers this year – “in excess of 14 000” – would be documented and sent to Guinness World Records for ratification.
It was also established that the projected number of 17 000 entries for this year’s Midmar Mile had fallen short of this expectation “by around 400”.
Chad Ho was in record-breaking mode winning his fourth open men’s title in a row in 17 minutes and 57 seconds.
Until last year no male swimmer had won three titles in a row until Ho achieved this honour.
Yesterday the Westville star positively took control of the race, swimming at the front and dictating the pace, until the final 400m when his acceleration proved too much for his nearest challengers, Troyden Prinsloo and Capetonian Danie Marais, who were second and third respectively.
The women’s race saw the end, for the moment at least, of the reign of Britain’s Keri-Anne Payne who, with seven victories between 2004 and 2012, was beaten by American Ashley Twichell.
Twichell, who is based at the Aquatic Centre at Mission Viejo in Southern California, where she is coached by Bill Rose, took command of the race soon after the first 400m, dropping the Hungarian, Katinka Hosszu, Payne, Michelle Weber and Rene Warnes to avenge her two-second defeat to Payne last year.
Twichell’s time of 19 minutes and four seconds was 17 seconds ahead of Payne in second place and another 10 seconds faster than Weber, winner of the 5km race at last year’s Fina World Youth Open Water Championships in Canada.
Ho and Weber are both coached by the well-known Durban coach, Alisdair Hatfield at the Ocean Action Swimming Academy.
