Swimmer Profile – Ted Bunt
Congratulations to Ted Bunt, our newly elected VP North.
Ted has been a masters’ swimmer for 30 years, and is currently the President of the Cairns Clams Masters Swimming Club. He has been instrumental in organising ocean swims, club swim days, swim meets and charity relays. Ted swam a marathon for Camp Quality at the Tobruk Pool in 2010, swimming 35.4km. He has participated in the Rottnest Channel swim; in 2019 in a two-person relay, and in 2020 as a four person Cairns Clams team member.
Ted has assisted MSQ in hosting the last two Great Barrier Reef Masters Games, and was to have been the Meet Director for the 2020 State Championships to be held in Cairns this year. He will be Meet Director for the 2021 Great Barrier Reef Masters Games. Ted has also completed his Technical Officials course for Starter.
“I started swimming with Ryde Swimming Club in Sydney. I trained for a short time with Forbes and Ursula Carlisle and later took up Water Polo with the Ryde Water Polo Club. I took a long break from swimming and started back when ocean swimming became a little more popular. The training for ocean swimming and a move to a new area, close to inner city Sydney, developed the compulsive need for more swimming and fitness. A group of swimmers started a Masters Club at Victoria Park Pool near Sydney University.
I moved to Cairns Queensland and joined the C.L.A.M.S. (Cairns Legends and Masters Swimming) based at Tobruk Pool. The Tobruk Pool has undergone extensive redevelopment and is now a ten lane international standard pool. Our Masters Swimming Club is all about fun and fitness and has a strong core of people who like to get out there and try new things, for example, Ironman, Ocean Swimming, Rottnest Island Swims and challenging training ‘events’. In the Rottnest Island Swim in Perth last year, I swam with a brilliant swimmer from Victorian Masters and we managed a third place in our duo age division. This year I was in a team of 4 and we didn’t place but we had a great swim and trip away.
We have had a number of charity events one of which was a marathon swim I did for Camp Quality. I swam a lazy 35.3 kilometres (706 laps) and raised a little over $6,000 dollars. Camp Quality is an organisation that assists sick children and their families.
Motivated members of our club and Masters Swimming makes swimming a little more interesting than swimming thousands of laps… not that there is anything wrong with swimming thousands of laps … but it has to cater for swimmers of various ages and abilities and a variety of events and training sessions make it a tad more entertaining.”
Ted Bunt, QCS
