Chasing highs through the lows

Ice swimming is the fine art, I would say, of, no, it's a sport.

It's swimming in water below the five degree Celsius temperature mark.

And it's a swimming competition where our swimmers are wearing regular togs, a single cap, goggles, and that's it.

And that's it.

So just a regular swim comp in cold weather?

Not quite.

We measured the temperature this morning.

It was 3.8 degrees, which is great for us because it means that all our swims qualified under the ice swimming mark.

If it's above the 5 degrees Celsius, we have to call that a nice swim.

Snowy mountain cab.

Beautiful surrounding, to be honest, to have this event.

So really grateful to be here, to have the pool letting us use their facilities.

It's just amazing for what we're doing.

But Belgium-born Leti's journey into extreme cold water swimming didn't start with a desire for glory or medals.

It started as a search for healing.

I don't think I would be here if it wasn't for the swimming.

Moving to New Zealand in 2014, she found that open water swimming was a powerful reset button.

Mentally, I was not really in a good mindset.

I was going through a bit of depression and I was not really doing well, let's be honest.

and I remembered that being active always helped me and I always loved swimming so I went back to I found the nearest swimming pool in Auckland where I was living and I just started doing laps and I saw an advertisement for the the harbour crossing which is an open water competition that is happening every year they stopped doing the harbour crossing but they do they do different different film events around Auckland I was like, that's going to be a good challenge.

I want to be able to do that.

And that was the mental target I needed to stay afloat.

And yeah, I did it.

That was my first open washer event.

And I fell in love with the sport.