Dadiangas Torpedoes rule Phl’s longest swim race for 5th time

By BEVERLY PAOYON GLAN, Sarangani (May 18, 2012) - Dadiangas Torpedoes of General Santos City again conquered the Philippines’ longest swim challenge Friday (May 18) by clocking in 2:57:40 hours, beating nine other teams to the finish line. The Torpedoes ruled this year’s swim-across-the-bay dubbed as “Sarangani Bay Invasion 2012,” but seven minutes short of breaking their own 2007 (2:50:15.23) record. This is the 5th repeated victory of the Torpedoes since swim-across-the-bay was introduced in 2006 as the highlight event to kick-off Sarangani Bay Festival every summer. Until now the 15-kilometer swim from Maasim to Glan, traversing the mouth of Sarangani Bay, is the country’s longest open ocean swimming competition and probably in Asia. Today’s swim challenge started at 6:25am at Kamanga Beach in Maasim. Ranked as the second placer this time is the Sea Lions of Koronadal City with official time of 3:02:52 hours, marking a slim difference of one minute and 40 seconds ahead of Davao’s team GenSan View Resort (3:03:12hours). Dadiangas Torpedoes received P50,000 cash, while Sea Lions and GenSan View Resort got P35,000 and P25,000, respectively. All finishing teams received P6,000 each as consolation prize. Governor Migs Dominguez said the swim challenge is “one way (also) of helping our swimmers to be able to compete not only in swimming pools but also in international swimming competition offshore.” “This is not only about winning but also about finishing and conquering,” he added. Swim organizer Nimrod Butil said this year’s race is “one of the fastest” next to 2007 record as he looks forward to the shortest time ever in the history of swim-across-the-bay. “Ang kagandahan ngayon ay hindi masyadong maalon,” Butil said attributing the good weather to the swimmers’ advantage. Torpedoes team member Lawin Dacera said although this was not his first time joining the race, he admitted to have encountered “certain surprises”. He said these were technicalities like “additional rules, problems with the boat and sometimes human error which may cause some slight snags on the swim.” Dacera bared his team’s game plan was “pretty easy.” “It’s basically, go out there and swim hard, swim fast and don’t really care if you got last or first. Just have fun.” He said “It’s really amazing to be the champion this year!” A group of young women also finished the race. Kelsev Jaudian, 11, is the youngest conqueror from an all-girls team. She simply described the race to be “masaya” to have survived being the youngest among the participants. The race, she said, made her brave enough not to be afraid of the underwater (hindi matakot sa underwater.) Hurry Dacera, club coach of Dadiangas Torpedoes, said “I think it’s not really that crazy advocacy on what you’re doing. And I think these guys are confident enough. They are in shape. I guess it’s a good experience and it’s also a good accomplishment.” He said it was hard to describe his feelings being the champ coach “but it brings tears to my eyes especially when I see them coming” to the finish line after almost three hours. For more news and updates, please visit the Province of Sarangani . Live web updates powered by SMART. (Beverly C. Paoyon/SARANGANI INFORMATION OFFICE)