In an electric start to the final day of the Red Cross Murray Marathon, lightning flashed on the western horizon and the east was flooded by a blood-red sunrise, and later this afternoon the four-man ‘super boat’ charged home to victory 50 minutes under the record. They are the first team to break the elusive 25-hour barrier.

After paddling a total of 404 km, the four-man super boat crew achieved their goal of completing the race in the outright fastest time, winning the overall handicap and taking line honours each day. They completed the five-day marathon by paddling into Swan Hill in 24 hours, 18 minutes and 47 seconds.

Their boat was custom-made in Cobram, one of the towns on the Marathon map for this event, and the first time Simon Stenhouse (Canberra), Nev Hargreaves (Yarrawonga), Michael Leverett (Melton) and Tim Naughtin (Corowa) have competed together. Each team member trained by paddling up to 200 km a week over the past four months.

“What we’re seeing here is probably the fastest K4 long-distance team that Australia could ever produce,” says Glenn Hemphill, who set the previous record in 1992 with Nev Hargreaves.

Paddling the final 76 kms in 4 hours 35 minutes and 45 seconds, the super boat came in ahead of 700 other competitors (give or take a few scratchings). Over five days they have travelled through rugged country and a 70,000 hectare red gum forest along the river border shared by NSW and Victoria between Yarrawonga and Swan Hill.

First-time Marathon paddler Ben Maynard took the Red Cross Cup with veteran Marathon team mate Ben Poole in the Olympic class single kayak relay, for the Geelong Canoe Club. They completed the 404 km in 27 hours 8 minutes and 28 seconds.

“I’m a competitive person, but at the roots of it I like river tripping – now more than I ever did as a kid,” said team member Maynard, who has represented Australia four times in kayaking at the sport’s World Cup since 1998.

The Woodleigh Water Ratz from Frankston cleaned up in this year’s rowdy schools relay by completing the race in 29 hours and two seconds, with representatives from each year level of the 500-person secondary school trumping elite teams from grammar schools Trinity and Camberwell.

The weather gods graced this year’s event with vastly different conditions. Last year’s temperatures soared as high as 46 degrees and dehydration was the main ailment to claim exhausted paddlers. A relatively cool average temperature of 29 degrees took the pressure off Red Cross first aid volunteers, who treated around 200 people a day across the five-day event, mostly for blisters, strained wrists and soft-tissue trauma.

Over the full distance, competitors each guzzled at least 93 litres of fluid (roughly three litres an hour), performed 135,000 strokes of the paddle and lathered themselves with half a litre of sunscreen.

The Red Cross Murray Marathon began in the summer of ’69 when ten friends raised $250 for the Australian Red Cross. Last year’s event generated more than $350,000 for vital Red Cross services, including the work recently undertaken by Red Cross Emergency Services volunteers in areas affected by bushfires.