Double gold for Brighton Swimming Club at the 90th Pier to Pier
There’s a nice symmetry to it. In the 90th year of one of the oldest open water swim races in the world, both overall winners came from the club that’s been running it since 1936, and swimming this stretch of coast since 1860.
Leonardo Masserini took the men’s overall title. Martha Gibb took the women’s. Two Brighton Swimming Club members, first out of the water at their own event, on a course that’s tested swimmers for nine decades.
The Pier to Pier is a 1km swim from the beach beside the derelict West Pier to the iconic Palace Pier, a route that’s barely changed since the race began, aside from swimmers now starting from the sand rather than diving off the West Pier itself. It’s open to skins and wetsuit swimmers alike, all racing in the same category, and this year marked a landmark anniversary for what’s believed to be one of the oldest sea swimming races anywhere in the world.
Founded in 1860, Brighton Swimming Club is the country’s oldest continuously running swimming club, and the sea section has operated almost without interruption ever since, pausing only when wartime beach closures made it impossible. So there’s something fitting about club swimmers leading the field home in a year the club itself was celebrating.
Congratulations to Leonardo and Martha, and to everyone who got in the water on the day, whether racing for the trophy or simply taking on a swim they weren’t sure they could do. That’s what the Pier to Pier has always been about.
Photos from the day, including plenty of the podium moments, are up in the official event gallery.
