“Make every swimmer the best that they can be.”
That is the mission statement of swim teacher Odette Randelhoff, 64, who has been teaching swimming full-time for 35 years.
Recently, Randelhoff participated in her umpteenth aQuellé Midmar Mile, a journey she started in 1977 when she was in matric at Pietermaritzburg Girls’ High School.
“I was in the GHS swim team and Midmar was pretty new; it was in its fourth year, and our whole school team decided to swim it,” Randelhoff said. “I had actually just had my appendix removed a couple of weeks before, but that’s what Midmar is about, it’s about participation and doing the mile and saying you did.”
She had a big break and then swam her second Midmar Mile in the early 1990s with her daughter, who was six or seven years old at the time.
“In December 2012, my husband died. In February 2013, I swam all eight miles in his memory for Pink Drive,” Randelhoff said.
She said that swimming with Craig Dietz, a limbless American, was probably the highlight of her swimming career and described swimming beside him as “amazing”.
Randelhoff’s the head learn-to-swim teacher at Seals Swimming Club, a world-renowned swimming club in Pietermaritzburg, which is also the organising body for the Midmar Mile. She teaches people between the ages of 18 months and the oldest at the moment is probably in his 60s. She works four to six hours daily teaching swimming.
She has a long working relationship with Seals’ head coach Wayne Riddin, who does all the coaching once the swimmers have reached a competitive level. Ridden has an amazing record of getting swimmers to the Olympic Games and many other world-class swimming events.
“I do the learn-to-swim and stroke work groups, getting them ready to move up to competitive,” Randelhoff said.
Randelhoff said she once taught a 61-year-old woman who was born blind how to swim.
“She had never ever been in what she calls a tub of water. I had taught all her employer’s family and they asked if I would be able to teach her,” Randelhoff said.
“Age isn’t a reason not to learn to swim.”
Randelhoff explained that her mission statement is the most important thing she can impart – to make every swimmer the best that they can be.
“It’s really important because if you come to me for swim lessons, it’s because you, as an adult, want to do it. As a young parent, you want to be able to feel safe in the water with your children. There are different reasons why a person wants to learn to swim,” she said.
“It’s just sharing a passion and making everyone be the best that they can be.”
She explained that there are many reasons people want to learn to swim.
“Mostly with children, it is to become water safe, pool safe.
“It’s just such a confidence booster, it’s self-discipline. It’s extreme self-discipline to be good at swimming, you have to listen in all waters. I’m strict with water safety, it’s unbelievably important. You can’t just be safe sometimes, you have to be safe and respectful of water at every single moment wherever you are.”
Randelhoff added that there is nothing that has ever stopped someone from learning to swim… There are lots of spectrums of children nowadays with Asperger’s syndrome and physical and mental disabilities. Put them in the water, and it is a total leveller. They just feel so beautiful and so free and then they too can learn to swim.
For the Midmar Mile last month, Seals Swimming Club had identified a large group of swimmers that fall, politically, “under the development line”. Quite a few of them are competitive swimmers, and they were fine to go on their own; they could enter and swim on their own, they did not need a companion.
“But four, specifically, I had taught from quite a young age. They had never swam in a dam, so I promised the parents, and I reassured the swimmers that they would be fine, and I had identified them as being good enough to do it, and I assured them that I would swim with them, which I did,” Randelhoff explained. “I wanted it to be a special experience for these four swimmers with me.
“Most years I have swam across with one or two of my children for their first event but this year was more about an identified group that I took across.”
Additionally, her children swam the Midmar Mile several times each.
Looking at her spell at this year’s Midmar Mile, she said it was tough because of the wind. The wind had picked up early and there was also a head-on and side-on wave.
Randelhoff, who loves being in the water, said: “I swam across the Ganges River in India just because I was there. It was so beautiful. I’ve swam the Henley Mile in London, which is in the Thames River. I’ve done lots of the surf swims and things like that.
“Wherever I go on holiday or wherever I am, I just get in the water and swim.
“I’m not a medal collector, I just want to say I was in the water.
“I can’t be by water and not be in it. It’s just so beautiful and quite therapeutic.”
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