Pierre Mangez
A dumb calcaneal fracture had me watching the ÖTILLÖ Swimrun Hvar season opener online, courtesy of Spocks live webcast. The heartache of not being a part of the weekend was akin to being in high school and hearing that your ex went to Prom without you.
Except this ain’t high school, and when you give your heart to ÖTILLÖ, you get plenty of love back from the awesome swimrun community, as proven by the Instagram feeds from teams documenting their race weekend in Croatia – from arrival in the old town to testing out kit pre-race, and from Finish Line hugs to post-race celebrations.
We followed Team Garmin George Bjälkemo and Pontus Lindberg as they celebrated victory – and George’s birthday – after a less than successful Hvar race last year.
We cheered on Camille Marchand that her knees would go the distance as she and UL’Team partner Julien Antoine took on Hvar for the first time.
We saw Olof Karlsson and teammate David Thylén trying to qualify for the 2019 ÖTILLÖ WC with the 7/24 Concept.
We learned that Joanna Hanner was on her honeymoon but her Swimrun4Diabetes teammate still raced.
We discovered that Diane Sadik suffered a broken rib on the course, and wrote a stunning post-race IG post about her supportive swimrun partner Henrik Walhberg.
We were stoked to see Fanny Danckwardt take 1st in the Women’s Division and win the Vivobarefoot Section Prize.
We wondered if Team Nynäshamns Ångbryggeri with Joakim Brunzell and Johan Carlsson will again top the World Series Swimrun Ranking Standings this year.
And the instavibes continued last weekend with the Costa Brava ÖTILLÖ Merit Race, and a video of Team Garmin’s Ida Enstedt and Michelle Nyström doing a kick-ass rendition of carpool karaoke with Swimrun4fun and Elin Sterner.
And even though half of Team TwinnyDip had a broken hand, they managed to complete the running sections of the Costa Brava race.
Utö swimrun is on May 20 and although it’s my first race weekend with fellow swimrunners since September, the instalove will pick up right where we left off. That’s the splendour of the ÖTILLÖ swimrun family. Nancy Heslin, Editor
Article first published in Swimrun Life Magazine Issue #7 (May 2018)
