KEY STATS: 118 starters, 93 official Finishers

Here we go, our first full scale event - and if we had any doubts whether this would scale up, they were swept away by the amazing stories that came out during and after the event from our incredible growing 33.3 family of swimmers from all over the world. Incredible weather, no big stormy days like on #1, and 93 incredible swimmers of all levels nailed the full event and got the coveted Finisher droplets, out of 118 starters.

At the front Germany’s Michael Dieckmann took the wetsuit category place overall, having fought the Skins male category winner Paul Newsome for line honours in the first two days before switching to wetsuit. Brazil’s famous young Channel swimmer Thais Sant’anna took the female skins category, and the most energetic and lovely Ceri Edwards from the UK took the female wetsuit prize.

New to open water swimming, Moritz Eggert, Germany’s famous music composer, won the ‘most improved swimmer’ award, climbing from last place on day 1 steadily up the rankings. He’d be back in 2024 with even more progress! Nadia Nasrollah won the Selkie Robe Endurance prize - incredible performance to finish her first big open water swim having come to the test event as a non-participating partner to Kamal - coming back one year later and nailing inside the cutoff the entire course!

Michael Lemmel, founder of Otillo SwimRun (and the entire Swim Run concept) was persuaded to remove his giant paddles and running shoes, and go endurance swimming! He nailed it! And has ever since been part of the Advisory Board for UltraSwim 33.3.

For the first time we introduced an option to swim under Marathon Swim Federation (MSF) rules on the marathon (>10km) day 3 swim - 20 swimmers nailed this ‘extra’ challenge - no neoprene, no touching the feedstations or kayaks, no watches, no drafting behind another swim. This became an option on all our consequent marathon stages in future events.