Marathon swimmer Rob Hutchings was born in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada but has called Christchurch his home for the past seven years.
It was his second attempt at the Mackenzie Basin lake after an earlier-than-expected storm in 2022 forced him to "be something resembling a responsible adult" and call off his swim at the 21km mark.
After a cancerous tumour was removed from his foot in 2023 and 2024 was dedicated to recovery, there was nothing standing in his way this year and on April 5 he swam the full 28km of Lake Pukaki in 8.5 hours.
Hutchings has now added Pukaki to his impressive list of New Zealand swims which include Lake Tekapo (27km, 2021), Milford Sound (16km, 2022), Lake Coleridge (16km, 2020, 2022 and 2024), Buller Gorge (42km, three times) and all 256km of the Clutha River from Wanaka to the Pacific in February 2020.
He said Lake Pukaki was one of the most beautiful swims he had completed.
"Seven of the eight and a-half hours were in the most idyllic, mirror-like conditions. I had nearly made it before a sudden strong cross wind picked up. Normally, I love the rough water but after seven hours of feeling strong in such peaceful conditions, the waves from the side churned my belly.
"I knew the crosswind was forecast but I was just hoping that I could borrow Michael Phelps’ last name and get there before the crosswind hit. It was a rough last 90 minutes.
"It wasn’t my strongest-ever finish but I made it and I did predict it would take between eight and nine hours," Hutchings said.
"I’m not absolutely sure but I’m pretty confident and have been told that I’m the second person to swim Pukaki and apparently the second person to have done Tekapo. The first was the American marathon swimming legend Lynne Cox, who was also the first woman to swim the Cook Strait."
"I would call myself an upper-mid range athlete and when the elites weren’t at regional races, I’d often be in the top three to five.
"I’m 50% genetically a hippopotamus. I’m really bad at any sport that involves aiming a ball at a target. I found that out quickly and got into swimming when I was 13 and then triathalon a few months later.
"I found that despite not having a lot of other athletic talents, and after a small amount of practice, I can swim in a straight line in the open water which is very helpful.
"After a few years of being a triathlete my swimming coach came to me and said ‘look, you obviously love the open water, you can be a marathon swimmer and a triathlete if you want to be’. She pointed me in the direction of marathon swimming and I branched out and started competing in both marathon swimming and triathlon. That’s what I’ve done since."
He said a job opportunity brought him to New Zealand.
"I did my chiropractic education in Britain and then I moved to Australia in 2002. I met my wife there, we lived in Australia for roughly 15 years and then did a stint in Singapore for a year.
"I was catching up on the phone with a friend of mine, who owns the clinic that I now work in, and I was saying to him I wasn’t 100% happy with my work situation in Singapore and I wasn’t 100% sure where I was going to go or what I was going to do next.
"He just casually mentioned that he was going to hire a new associate in several months and I said I’ll do it, we agreed and then I hung up the phone realising I offered to move, to get another country without consulting my wife. When she got home, I quickly told her and she was really keen on it.
"She’s worked out she loves the climate here and the plus 40 degrees thing in Australia never really worked out with my polar bear blood. I love it here too and we’re going to become citizens."
Hutchings said he would now be doing some dry land recovery before undertaking his next big swim.
"For my 50th birthday I’ll be heading back home to Newfoundland and there are two big swims I’m planning to do. There’s a place called Western Brook Fiord and it’s actually about the same size as Milford Sound, 16km, and both are Unesco World Heritage Sites.
"When I was living 90 minutes away, I never thought of swimming it because I was so focused on competition back then. The other is the Humber River which is a big beautiful river that’s roughly 40km long.
"There is also still a million things left for me to do in New Zealand."
