By CASEY NEILL
LONG-DISTANCE swimmer Tammy Van Wisse grew up just a block away from Sandown Greyhounds.
She told the Greater Dandenong Chamber of Commerce Premier Regional Business Awards breakfast on Wednesday 25 November that her dad owned a business on Lightwood Road and she swam at the Noble Park and Dandenong pools.
The guest speaker encouraged businesses to swim with the tide, not against it, and to control what they could and deal with and what they couldn’t.
Ms Van Wisse set six world records during her career, five that are still standing.
In an example of her glass-half-full approach to life, she revealed she suffers from selachophobia – a fear of sharks.
The Jaws theme often enters her head as she swims.
“Stephen Spielberg has so much to answer for,” she said.
“I like to think my fear of sharks has helped me swim faster.”
Ms Van Wisse was the first person to swim across Bass Strait.
“I’m a person who looks for opportunity,” she said.
She spoke about putting together her support team and the importance of communication.
“I was placing my safety in their hands,” she said.
“I needed them to understand my vision.”
Her crew used a whiteboard to communicate with her during her swims. It was her lifeline and supported her mental health.
But she said the message “3.7 kilometres done, 94 to go” during her Bass Strait journey was not a constructive one.
The next message, that her crew was sea sick, prompted her to jokingly ask them to vomit on the opposite side of the boat and put her in a happy mental place.
A “96” on the board indicated she was achieving her optimal number of strokes per minute.
When Ms Van Wisse was desperate and down, the shout of “not far to go now” got her adrenaline pumping – even if “not far” was six hours of swimming.
She said she put the task into perspective – she had to put in six more hours to achieve something no one had ever done before.
“Once you see results like this it gets addictive,” she said.
