Carli Antonopoulos was covering up to 90km a week in training in the build-up to last year’s aQuellé Midmar Mile.
Having finished second in the elite women’s race in 2024, she was determined to go one better in 2025 before disaster struck. The Pretoria-based swimmer slipped while climbing into the boat to take her across the dam to the start for one of her warm-up swims and broke her arm.
That brought a lengthy halt to her training programme. “From the 8th of February until the beginning of May, I was basically out,” explained Antonopoulos.
“I was out the water for three weeks, and then the fourth week I was back in the water with my cast and everything. Then the cast came off because I lost too much muscle in my arm, but then I got a little mouldable brace thing. So that was quite good. But I had that on for another eight weeks after, so officially got cleared at the beginning of May.”
Since then, the 24-year-old has been playing catch-up, but, having won the final aQuellé Midmar Mile seeding swim, she can’t wait to get back to the famous KwaZulu-Natal dam for this year’s event which runs from 5-8 February.
“I feel like I need to redeem myself a little bit after falling last year, but I am very excited,” she reckoned. “Anything can happen on the day. So, I’m just excited to be there on the start line with all my friends, race hard, race fast… just see how it goes.”
Antonopoulos is currently being coached by former national champion Gary Albertyn, who achieved the incredible milestone of completing 200 aQuellé Midmar Mile swims in 2025, having only started swimming the race in 2012.
“It’s very inspirational because obviously Gary has done so much and he’s got a lot of experience,” she explained. “So, that’s quite nice going into Midmar. He is able to help us out and give us some tips and tricks for the day, so that’s quite exciting.”
Having also missed last year’s SA National Open Water Championship because of the broken arm, Antonopoulos is looking forward to a return to that event as well – with plenty of mileage under her belt. But there’s also been a fair amount of speedwork in the mix.
“We’ve mostly been focused on open water champs, so mostly the 10km and the 5km,” she said. “But with Gary becoming our coach now, we’ve done a lot of speedwork as well. I guess that has helped the 1.2km, and the 1.6 for Midmar, so I think we’ve got the endurance, but we’ve also built up the speed. In previous years we didn’t necessarily always have so much speed.”
That could make all the difference come race day on 8 February.
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