Swimarathon 2015 raises £133,000 – see pictures and video of Jersey’s longest-running fundraiser

In total, more than 450 teams took to the pool – the most since the event started 44 years ago – over five days at Les Quennevais Sports Centre.

The annual swim is Jersey’s longest-running charity fundraiser.

£133,087.19 – the total raised

450 – the number of teams

26,344 – the number of laps swam

1972 – the year the first Swimarathon was held

The RBC-sponsored event was opened by the Lieutenant-Governor, General Sir John McColl, on Thursday and the last swimmers exited the pool on Sunday night.

A total of £133,087.19, one of the highest totals ever and £7,000 more than last year, was raised as the participants swam a total of 26,344 laps – the equivalent of 818 miles.

John Le Maistre, president of the Lions Club of Jersey, which organises the event, said: ‘It is wonderfully fitting that an event which encourages participation from all corners of our community will help, among other projects, local charities that offer new and diverse activities to people with disabilities.’

‘It really shows how the Swimarathon still has the power to attract people and raise a lot of money for charity.’

Twenty-five per cent of the money raised will to charities which support people with disabilities, 50 per cent will go to providing respite holidays and support general community service projects, and the remainder will be donated to Channel Islands Air Search.

The winners of the RBC Challenge Cup, which is awarded to the team who records the highest number of laps in 55 minutes, has yet to be announced.

The cup was introduced by RBC Wealth Management in 2012 in an effort to try to encourage more Island businesses to take part.

Don’t miss our full-colour, 16-page Swimarathon supplement, free inside Wednesday’s JEP, featuring photographs of hundreds of swimmers of all ages and abilities.

• The Swimarathon was launched by the Lions Club of Jersey in 1972 as a one-off event. It was thought that sponsored swims would never be as popular as sponsored walks.
• The first Swimarathon was known as the ‘Swimathon’.
• For many years the Swimarathon – always run in conjunction with the Jersey Swimming Club – was expertly managed by the late Harold Michel and his wife Flo, with support from the late Roy and Eileen Horsfall.
• The Swimarathon has attracted many showbusiness personalities including actress Susan Hampshire, who visited the first Swimarathon in 1972. The best remembered celebrity could be the late Roy Castle, who both continually entertained the participants and spectators and managed raise a considerable sum by persuading his audience to part with their loose change time and time again.
• From the mid-1970s and for several years afterwards, the Lions Club of Jersey Swimarathon held the Guinness World Record for money raised from sponsored swimming.
• The Lions Club of Jersey published a ‘How to run a successful Swimarathon’ handbook which has been given to many organisations across the UK. Among the organisations to have benefited was the British Commonwealth Games Association, who ran a Swimarathon to raise funds for the Edinburgh Games and raised more than a quarter of a million pounds.
• In the 1980s the concept was exported to Guernsey, where a swim is organised jointly by the Lions Club of Guernsey and the Guernsey Round Table.
• In all the years it has been taking place, the Swimarathon has never been postponed. In February 1979, when Jersey shivered under a blanket of snow, swimmers taking part in the 8 am Sunday swim trudged through snow to Fort Regent from as far as St Peter in order not to miss their allotted session.
• Since 2007, the Swimarathon has been sponsored by RBC Wealth Management, who not only sponsor each lap swum by every participating team but have also entered a number of teams
• The greatest number of laps completed within the 55 minutes allowed has been consistently achieved by the Regent Tigers, whose current record stands at 90 laps of the Fort Regent pool. This is likely to last for all time since the configuration at the Les Quennevais pool is different from that at Fort Regent.
• The slowest lap was not even completed by a member of one team who decided that he would walk his laps along the Fort Regent pool’s bottom while dressed as a Red Indian and smoking a peace pipe. He was pulled out by a Fort Regent lifeguard halfway into his first lap after he had slithered into the deep end and his pipe went out.

THERE are many annual events in the Island which celebrate Jersey’s strong community spirit, its great support for charity and our appetite to come together for a good cause and have fun.

Over the next few days, we will see all of those qualities in spades as hundreds of people take part in the 44th Swimarathon, once again organised by the Lions Club of Jersey and this year sponsored by RBC Wealth Management.

Bailiffs, past and present, will line up alongside politicians, school pupils, business teams and many more to help raise thousands of pounds for people with disabilities, their carers, Channel Islands Air Search and many other groups and organisations.

Amid the moans and groans that punctuate the pages of this newspaper every day, the Swimarathon provides an opportunity for us all to look up and enjoy a showcase for what is great about our small community.