This is interesting.

Did you see the 2025 Wellington Junior Championships, being held in Nelson, are on the same weekend as the Comet Club dual meet with Enterprise? That will mean swimmers wanting to compete in both will need to scoff a steak and cheese pie and leave Gisborne on the 5.30am flight to Auckland to connect with a flight to Nelson, unless they drop both meets and the pie and go to Ashburton for the Chocolate Fish Carnival. On second thoughts, keep the pie and have the chocolate fish for dessert. That’s what Greg and Gary would have done.

Sadly, Ashburton clashes with the Washington State dual meet with Stanford. How are Stanford swimmers going to qualify for the Dargaville Up and Comers Meet and the NCAA Championships, when the trials were in Auckland the very next weekend, the year before? I don’t know how Andy didn’t see that.

Invercargill has a meet at their Olympic learn-to-swim pool (15m) two weekends later in 2027 – an ideal opportunity for Eyad, Chris and Chelsey to set New Zealand 15m records.

Also, Invercargill ties in well with the Commonwealth Games in Fiji on the same weekend. But Otaki swimmers wanting to swim the following weekend, a year later in 2028, in the Olympic Open Water swim in a newly created lagoon at Pitcairn Island will have to have qualified in the Kapiti Island to Paraparaumu Beach swim in 2021. If they missed that – bad luck. Blame Jon Winter – everybody else does.

They will also miss the gumboot throwing championships in Taihape, the Golden Shears in Masterton, and the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake in Gloucester, England (Steve Johns is favorite to win all three).

However, Swimming New Zealand has entered a junior team in the Delray Beach, Florida, Aqua Crest Club’s Grab-a-Time Invitational. This should work out well except Amanda has lost the tickets.

Never mind, they are transferable to the Final Battle Meet at the Northern Lights swim club in Anchorage, Alaska. Note to Graham Smith – get in early – sledge and dog teams are selling fast.

Gary Francis won’t be there – he is opening the new, naturally heated, high altitude training camp next to the Mount Ruapehu crater lake, featuring a crater lake 50m butterfly by the red-hot William Benson and on-the-boil, Hazel Ouwehand.

This new program and the lost tickets are all the work of Cloe Francis, who I’m told is in training to swim backstroke up the Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel to celebrate next year’s Matariki holiday. Is there anything Chloe can’t do? Not, it seems, from what I’ve read.

Best of all, don’t miss this occasion. It does conflict with the first round of the underwater netball finals at the Pitcairn Olympic Lagoon. But Sir Nick Tongue has modestly accepted a knighthood for services to marine life in the Owen Glenn aquarium.   

Thank you for explaining all this to me. Where would SNZ be without your knowledge, expertise and Shakespearian prose?

Now I think I need to lie down.