Abbey Smale is a bit of an enigma.
On one hand, the teenager is dominating the waves, winning every race she’s entered in the NZ Ocean Swim Series over the past two summers.
On the other, she admits she’s terrified of the ocean.
But it’s that fear that’s helping propel Smale through the water so rapidly, making the 18-year-old the top female ocean swimmer in the nationwide series.
“Sea swimming isn’t actually something I enjoy doing. I’m actually really terrified of the ocean,” she says.
“It’s just not knowing what’s underneath you. If I see a shadow, I freak out. Sometimes I see my own arm while I’m swimming and think something is following me. So I’ll just start swimming faster and I get into a sprint.
“My nana and I have a good joke: the faster I swim, the faster I can get out.”
Joking or not, it’s working. Smale, a Year 13 student at Garin College in Nelson, hasn’t been beaten in her last nine events in the Banana Boat NZ Ocean Swim Series. She’s not only the top woman in the fields of over 300 swimmers, but she’s frequently finishing in the top six swimmers overall.
Despite her fear, it’s her goal to swim as far as she can – with the Olympic swimming marathon at the end of that ambition.
Last weekend, Smale was both the first woman home in the 3.5km Legend of the Lake swim around the Blue Lake in Rotorua, and the top girl in the national secondary schools open water championship. Now she’s preparing to make her mark in the pool at the NZ swimming championships in a fortnight.
Almost every day for the last 15 years, Smale has been diving into the Aquatic Centre pool in the Richmond township just south of Nelson, having learned to swim when she was three.
On top of training in the indoor pool six days a week, she’s just started working there out of school hours, teaching little kids how to swim.
“I might just move in,” laughs Smale, who’d like to be a primary school teacher.
She was lured into the ocean five years ago when her coach at the time encouraged her to train for the Epic Swim on Lake Taupo – an annual race that doubles as the national ocean swim championships.
The training meant learning to swim in open water. So she started swimming every Thursday night off the Nelson Port – a group swim organised by the local triathlon club. It’s now become a regular event on her calendar through summer.
“That’s how I got started. There was a girl, Caitlin Delaney, who I really looked up, and she swam with the new kids. So we went in the slowest wave and we all swam in a line. That was pretty cool – knowing you’re with other people is quite comforting,” Smale says. “That’s how it still feels now.
“Most Thursday nights, I find I’m swimming by myself. Three or so boys will be ahead of me, but there’s no-one close to be with me. So I’m swimming along trying to convince myself that I’m fine.”
It’s been the same in a race situation, where Smale will find herself out in front of the women’s race, with three or four male swimmers ahead of her.
“If I see a kayaker in front of me, I feel safe again, knowing there’s someone around me. If anything happens, I know I’ll be fine,” she says.
She often has no idea who is in front of her – there’s nothing in ocean swimming to differentiate between male and female swimmers.
“Having people in front of you always pushes you. Knowing they’re there, you want to be better than them. Male or female – to me they’re just swimmers,” Smale says.
“The thing I love about open water swimming is that anything can happen on the day. You don’t know what the conditions will be like, who’s in the group. That’s the challenge, it’s what makes it fun.”
So far this season, she’s been the first woman out of the water at Swim the Shore and the Bean Rock Swim in Auckland, Swim the Lighthouse in Wellington, and Rotorua’s Legend of the Lake. In the 5km La Grande Swim at Akaroa last month, Smale was the fourth swimmer out of the water in a field of 325.
She’ll miss the next event, the Mount Swim in Tauranga, because it’s the day before the national swim championships in Auckland. But she intends to finish the season with Swim the Bridge – the annual crossing of the Waitemata Harbour.
Smale’s parents, Lisa and Mark, have been on the water’s edge since she started ocean racing in 2019, winning the local Big Tahuna swim. Then she decided to enter as many races in the 2020 series as she could – obviously with their help to get around the country.
“In my first away race [at Takapuna], I started so badly, I had to pass heaps of people. I just assumed I was so far behind,” Smale recalls. “I remember coming out of the water, and my dad was on the beach yelling at me ‘Go, hurry up!’ and I didn’t know why. Then I crossed the finishline and they said ‘Abbey Smale, first woman’. And I was so confused. And Dad was out of breath, he was so excited that I’d won. It was a pretty cool feeling.”
Her dad is her “travel manager”, but Mum has filled in at a couple of events this year. “Normally Mum is all stressed out at home, trying to watch the livestream, but she doesn’t really know what’s going on. She’s just waiting for that phone call.”
Smale wants to go as far as she can in open water swimming; the 10km swimming ‘marathon’ has been an Olympic event since the 2008 Beijing Games. “That would be really cool to aim for,” she says.
But she has no desire to do long-distance ocean swims like her friend Caitlin O’Reilly. The 16-year-old last month swam across Foveaux Strait, becoming the youngest person to complete New Zealand’s triple crown of crossings (she’d already conquered Cook Strait and Lake Taupo).
“I just look at Caitlin and think it’s incredible how she does that. I could never do that myself – just because I’d be terrified. But she’s amazing,” Smale says.
They met last year at a Swimming NZ distance camp. The year before, Smale had gone with a New Zealand team to New South Wales for an open water event. But wildfires had taken hold of the state, and the day after they arrived, the event was cancelled because of the smoke risk.
“The experts were saying being there was almost as bad as smoking. So we were in Sydney for just 24 hours,” she says.
Last winter her swimming was disrupted again, this time by Covid-19. So she joined a netball team at school: “I really enjoyed being in a different atmosphere with a different group of people.”
But barring any more interruptions, Smale will give her full focus to the water this year – and aim for another clean sweep in the ocean series.
