A team of five elite WAIS rowers represented our institute recently at the Masters Swimming WA HeartSwim event fundraiser at Challenge Stadium.
Beijing Olympians Todd Skipworth, Ben Cureton and Jeremy Stevenson were joined by James Gatti and Emily Rose in competing in the three hour swim marathon, which raises money for the Heart Foundation and their life saving work.
The WAIS athletes put in a herculean effort in completing the second most laps of the Challenge Stadium Pool with 266 laps clocked off, equating to a distance of 13.3km.
WAIS Team captain Todd Skipworth said it was a pleasure to donate time and energy for the fight against heart disease – which is Australia’s number one killer.
“It was great to take some time out to help what is such an important cause,” Skipworth said. “It was a great feeling to represent my country at the Olympics and I was delighted to have the opportunity to highlight the excellent work being done by Heart Foundation.”
In all 39 teams joined in the fundraiser with the day labelled a great success by event organizer Fiona Ion.
“We had a great day, and received lots of positive feedback,” said Ion. “We had great MC’s and Meet Directors who kept things humming along and it looked like everyone enjoyed the sausage sizzle at the end.”
The HeartSwim event has been run since 2003 in conjunction with the Heart Foundation. Previously the event was competed as a satellite event in a number of venues around Perth. This year Masters Swimming took control of the event and ran it on behalf of the Heart Foundation and decided to run HeartSwim only from Challenge Stadium, who have been a fantastic partner in the event and very kindly donated their time, venue and staff to help run the event.
HeartSwim is run by volunteers so that it can give as much money as possible to the Heart Foundation. Cardio-vascular Disease is by far the leading cause of death in Australia, causing 34% of all deaths. It claims a life every 10 minutes.
Swimming is a fantastic way to increase your heart health and a fun way to get people involved in fundraising for a worthy cause.
WAIS would like to thank Todd Skipworth, Ben Cureton, Jeremy Stevenson, James Gatti and Emily Rose for volunteering their time and effort for such a worthy cause.
