You were nearly 700 entries in the end of 54 nationalities, over two-thirds of you nailed the challenge in full, 9 of you were picked out as runner-ups (thanks to Precision F&H, TheMagic5 for the cool prizes), and yes one lucky winner of the #10Montenegro free entry!
If you're not a prize winner this time, you can still benefit from some amazing offers for this our original venue in wonderful Montenegro this October!
From Falmouth, Maine, on the still very cold eastern seaboard of the USA, congratulations to Meri Gilson! Not only did Meri complete the challenge, the only swim she did over the 33 days in a nice warm pool was the 5km session. Why is that impressive? Because in her own words, the water in the Bay has been in the low 40's Fahrenheit (about 7-8C !). To Meri and her tough swimming mates, hats off (or neoprene ones on!), epic swimming, and we look forward to welcome you and your crew to Montenegro in October!
WINNER:
Meredith Gilson - United States
Runners up:
Bruce Williamson - United Kingdom
Joëlle Gaspoz - France
Rémy VIALLON - France
Michael Lyons - United Kingdom
Elizabeth Pudney - United Kingdom
Eduardo Campoy - United States
Barbara Levy - United States
Anna Chapman - United Kingdom
Laufey Thorsteinsdóttir - Iceland
Worth a mention - whilst the goal was just 33.3km, Simon Emm swimmer from #2Montenegro in 2023, completed an amazing 333km in the 33 day challenge window. You read that right. 3 hundred and 33! Stephane Guisard also notched up the 3rd biggest amount at 190km, as part of his preparation for our first ULTIMATE option at our next event in May in Croatia - where he'll take on a straight 33.3km from Stari Grad to Hvar! We had other swimmers nailing precisely 33.3km, not a meter more or less (nice one Phil Caistor, our extraordinary aquaman who lays our racemarks at the events). Plenty of you used the challenge to get back to it after a period out of the water "Thanks so much for this - its been the catalyst for me getting past a difficult period in life, and back to looking forward to swimming again!" Gill, UK.
Thanks to OpenSwim for their new app (sorry to those outside of Europe, its coming soon), and to everyone who shared their super swims on Strava too - our Strava Club numbers almost 1200 of you now. We're going to be posting new training session ideas on both platforms going forward, and we've already announced that #11Virtual in our event series will be in the first quarter of 2026 - for sure a 33.3km in 33 days challenge again, but maybe a 22.2 and 66.6km version?
In the meantime we're going to see a lot you around Europe this summer, and even more of you in 2026 we hope - entries are open!