Swimmers at the twelfth Braník Ice faced a Vltava flow almost ten times lower than last year. Held for the third time as the Ladislav Nicek Memorial, this edition avoided major extremes, unlike last year’s first-level flood alert or the previous year’s −14°C air temperature.
As usual, the longest distance was one kilometre. Last year, ninety swimmers finished within four minutes of one another; this time, only fifty started. Tereza Reichová brought us silver in the women’s race. Our best men’s results were two top-ten finishes: Jakub Valníček fourth and Tomáš Pilát seventh.
The 750 metres, sparsely entered last year, welcomed more than fifty swimmers this time. We won a medal here too, with Michal Kohoutek taking men’s bronze. Dana Tomášková was our best-placed woman. She had decided at the very last moment to switch from her usual 500 metres, and finished ninth. That also moved her into the twelve qualifiers for the Czech freestyle championships in Brno the following Saturday.
There were no junior entrants in the 500 metres, so times were not recorded. Eight of the 26 swimmers were club members.
The 250 and 100 metres are usually distances where our members outnumber the visitors to a greater or lesser extent. This time, fourteen of the 38 swimmers over 250 metres were ours, as were seventeen of the 24 in the 100 metres.
The gentle current and splitting the main kilometre race into two waves helped the experienced finish officials identify and record every swimmer without difficulty. Accurate results were therefore available shortly after racing ended. The twelfth Braník Ice could once again conclude with a sense of a job well done by everyone involved.
As last year, Prague will soon have another chance to see winter swimmers in the Czech Cup. Exactly one month later, on Saturday 1 March, we will organise the Czech Winter Swimming Championships in breaststroke in Podolí Swimming Stadium’s unheated outdoor 50-metre pool.
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Photos by Irena Lichá
