Peta Bradley grew up swimming in the Gulargambone pool down the road from her family’s farm in Armatree, a small town in regional NSW. Four hours from the ocean and an hour’s drive from Dubbo, Armatree recorded a population of 153 people in the last census.
Naturally, Bradley works in sheep genetics for Meat and Livestock Australia and on weekends she helps manage the family property. Less naturally, last week, at the foot of northern Italy’s snow-capped mountains, the 29-year-old became a world champion in ice swimming.
Peta Bradley wearing the racing suit she wore at the World Ice Swimming Championships, on her property in Armatree, NSW.Credit: Han Hodgkinson
When Coonamble Shire Council’s 25-metre Gulargambone Pool shuts over the winter and everyone else stops swimming, Bradley trains in the farm’s dams and, if she’s lucky and the frost is thick enough, the farm’s water trough will freeze over. When it does, Bradley cracks the ice and sits in the freezing water.
She returned to the property this week with three medals from her second world championships: two bronze for the 100m and 500m events and a gold for the 1000m swim in which she spent 14 minutes swimming in water a little over one degree.
“I’m very proud of where I come from and that I can compete in the sport. I actually think it’s contributed to my success in the sport more than anything. I appreciate every time I get to use a pool, I appreciate the fact that dams were full this year and I had full bodies of water to swim in,” she said.
Ice next to the pool at Molveno, Italy during the 2025 World Ice Swimming Championships.Credit: IICA
“That bit of bush resilience and toughness helps with your mental frame of mind going into these things.”
Resilience is essential in a sport so dangerous that competitors are required to wear safety belts so they can be pulled out of the water if they lose consciousness.
Bradley’s childhood swimming lessons at Gulargambone turned to squad swimming in high school and a hobby as an adult. She was introduced to cold water swimming in dams when pools shut during the pandemic.
Before being allowed to compete, all ice swimmers submit medical tests including electrocardiogram results because of the strain the sport places on the heart.
“One of my coping mechanisms to dealing with it, is understanding what’s happening with my body and why my body is reacting the way it does,” Bradley said.
In the water, Bradley loses feeling in her hands, feet and mouth. This is the result of blood rushing from the body’s extremities to keep the heart, and other vital organs, warm.
“Immediately you lose feeling in your fingers and toes and then it spreads to your hands and forearms and then basically your entire arm.”
Then, she says, one single thought dominates: “After a period of time you get that doubt coming to your mind, going ‘I need to get out’.”
But the greatest challenge of swimming a kilometre in one-degree water is not the 14 minutes spent in near-freezing temperatures but the five minutes after getting out when the body goes through what is known as the “after drop”.
As the body begins to recirculate warm blood from the extremities to the core, so too does the cold blood from its extremities.
“The pain or the hurt doesn’t actually go away when you finish racing, you’re about to get colder than what you were when you were racing,” Bradley said.
Peta Bradley after completing her gold medal swim in the 1000m at the 2025 World Ice Swimming Championships.Credit: IISA
“You feel it in your chest. It’s the most incredible sensation, and that’s actually why we have heart checks because that can cause stress on your heart when you start to rewarm and that’s when you start to shiver uncontrollably.”
Minutes after winning gold, Bradley was in a recovery room lined with medics and a defibrillator on standby. With seven other swimmers, she was being monitored for signs of heart failure.
“I guess if you haven’t been exposed to people with mild to moderate hypothermia, it can be a bit scary sometimes,” she said.
One of the most dangerous things an ice swimmer can do for their heart is have a warm bath or enter a sauna. Instead, swimmers must pair up with a “second”: someone who watches them from the moment they get into the water until after they pass post-swim medical checks. The second helps them out of the pool, get changed and slowly warm up their bodies again.
Bradley on her property in Armatree, NSW where she trains for cold water swimming.Credit: Han Hodgkinson
As the sport grows in popularity, Bradley says organisers are hoping to get it to the Winter Olympics. For Bradley, this means she could one day be an Olympic medallist.
Until then, she will keep swimming in dams and wait for the farm to frost over. The pain involved is a key motivator for why she keeps training.
“It’s learning to embrace what’s happening with your body and finding its limit switches, which is pretty cool, no pun intended.”
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