#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The daredevils from Norilsk, Moscow, Moscow region, St. Petersburg became the participants.
The athletes were accommodated in a comfortable recreation center Lama-2. There, the participants underwent intensive training for four days.
The swimmers were trained by experienced instructors led by the record holder of many winter swims, a coach with 30 years of experience and the leader of the Ice Union organization Natalya Vasilyeva.
The team of mentors also included the current world record holder for being in ice water Osman Delibash, a specialist in breathing practices Yury Kostenko, the organizer of a unique 180 km swimming rally in Samara Nikolay Kartaev and the head of the X-WATERS swimming series Alexander Bazanov.
According to Alexander Bazanov, many people in the world will also want to test their strengths on the Putorana plateau in the future. For a year, X-WATERS holds more than 20 starts in Russia and abroad, and in total the movement unites more than 20 thousand people from almost 80 countries of the world.
“We have never had such cold water: until that day, the coldest swim took place in Teriberka in the Murmansk region. Personally, I am very attracted here by the distance of four kilometers: if you swim across the lake from one of its lateral shores to the other. Despite the fact that this is a serious challenge, I am sure that there will be hundreds, and maybe thousands of people willing to accept it”, said Alexander.
Among the participants in the swim was a well-known blogger, the author of the Office Plankton project on YouTube, a fan of extreme sports, Pavel Makarov. The day before the start of the competition, he arranged a wakeboard race, which also became the first on the plateau. Moreover, he did it in the usual format for his blog – in a business suit and with elements of the show.
Pavel traveled to about 75 countries, visited hundreds of cities in Russia, and, by his own admission, Lama became the northernmost point on the map for him, where he tried wakeboarding.
Before the swim, the participants were given a general briefing and once again reminded that the most important thing is safety. Therefore, after consulting with experienced instructors, some of the swimmers changed the swimming distance. The decision was correct: on the day of the start, the weather worsened – it started raining, fog fell on the lake, it got colder.
As a result, two participants remained at the most difficult and extreme distance instead of the planned three, both daredevils are from Norilsk.
The head of the Norilsk Development Agency Maxim Mironov and the sports instructor Yury Engelgardt have inscribed their names in the history of Taimyr extreme sports.
Maxim Mironov finished first with a result of 35 minutes and 18 seconds. He admitted that for the last few years he had been a member of the Norilsk Nord Diving club and was fond of ice swimming.
Another winner was Dmitry Mogilev, a 20-year-old resident of Norilsk, who finished first in the shortest distance – 50 meters (38 seconds).
At other distances, the places were distributed as follows: at 50 meters among women, Olga Surkova was third, Olga Gaponova was second, Veronika Ksenofontova was first (48 seconds). Oleg Pilyugin and Anton Zaitsev followed the winner at the same distance in men.
Arthur Valiullin won silver in the 100-meter race, and Fedor Truhin celebrated the victory (1 minute 59 seconds).
One participant, Ivan Gordeychuk, entered the 1000-meter distance (in a wetsuit) for men; his result was 19 minutes 33 seconds. Among women, Elena Rodina came third to the finish line, Elena Turchina was the second, and the victory went to Ekaterina Suchkova (19 minutes 48 seconds).
Earlier we wrote that a one-day excursion to lake Lama had been developed in Norilsk.
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Text: Mikhail Tuaev, Photo: Denis Gaskov
