Perth swimming gun Max Coten wins back-to-back titles at Denmark’s Southern Ocean Classic Mile

Perth swimming gun Max Coten made it two wins in as many years in the Southern Ocean Classic Mile in Denmark on Easter Sunday.

Coten wrapped up a dominant weekend after finishing with the best time in the Albany Harbour Swim the day before and backed it up with a classy performance in the open water swim at Ocean beach.

Rene Watson from Perth also made her mark, powering home to emerge first out of the water in the female category, fresh from her category win in the Harbour Swim.

In slightly windy conditions, Coten improved considerably on his 2022 time of 24mins.17secs to stop the clock at 19:25 this time around.

Following closely behind was Mike Ledger (45-47 year division) to finish runner up with a time of 19:53 while Giacomo Lucivero rounded out the top three with a time of 21:26.

Watson was the fourth overall contestant to finish (22:06), narrowly edging out Reece Harris (22:18) in fifth place.

Dan Macey finished fifth in the male category with a time 23:39.

In the female category, Christine Murray was runner-up with an impressive time of 22:23 while Britt Ackerly (23:31), Coco Smargiassi (24:20) and Emily Chetwin (25:42) made up the top five.

Event organiser Nicole Hodgson was thrilled with another successful edition of the race.

“We were kind of wishing we started an hour earlier, there was absolutely no wind and then just before the start it picked up a bit,” she said.

“But on the whole, it was definitely the best conditions we’ve had in quite a while.

“He (Max) won it last year, he’s been right up there in other years and he’s still very young.

“We actually had a guy (Mike Ledger) come in second from a different age group and that was impressive.

“We had 123 (swimmers) finish so I think a couple of people didn’t quite make it but we were really happy with the numbers.

“It’s a small event and a small club but people really respond to the friendly fun of it, people really enjoy it.”