»Does everyone have a swimming buddy? Great. Let’s do it!«.
Wearing a bright pink swim cap pulled snugly over his ears, 58-year-old Hans Henrik Heming kicks off the afternoon swim for about 20 open water swimmers from the Copenwater club, where he serves as vice-chairman.
Men and women in wetsuits cautiously descend a metal ladder over a rocky shoreline in the outer part of Nordhavn. They glide into the dark sea and start swimming with smooth strokes. Soon, only rotating crawl strokes and caps are visible in the rippling surface, along with the brightly colored inflatable swim buoys they pull behind them to make themselves more visible to others.
Today’s swim takes place on Copenhagen’s new open water swimming course, which has just opened. It is situated in the water off the northern part of Nordhavn at the end of Kattegatvej, where a roundabout marks the end of the road. A yellow lane rope and buoys outline the rectangular course, which stretches 125 meters outward and measures 450 meters across.
