Cold warriors relive old rivalries in loch race

FORMER Cold War adversaries will go head-to-head again tomorrow in an effort to claim the world record for the fastest swim across Loch Ness.

The former submariners from the UK and the Soviet bloc will take on the challenge to mark the 50th anniversary of the K-19 nuclear accident, in which eight Russian crew members died.

Captain Oleg Adamov, the last captain of the Soviet submarine before she was decommissioned in 2003, will lead the Russian team of ten swimmers - including at least one woman - in the chilly 1.18 mile crossing of the loch at Urquhart Castle, near Drumnadrochit.

Two former British submariners are also expected to take part.

Captain Adamov is the head of his local winter swimming club, where they break up ice before competing outside. Ex-submariner Martin Douglas, a crew member of HMS Resolution between 1981 and 1987 - and a member of Loch Ness RNLI Lifeboat - has organised the swim, for which there is no current record.

"There is a real bond between submariners. Oleg has already done a reconnaissance trip to the loch," he said. "It will be very poignant too."

The Soviet crewmen died in 1961 after the nuclear reactor's cooling system sprung a leak, threatening an explosion.

The blast could have sparked a nuclear war with the US, but the eight submariners undertook a suicidal mission to repair the breakdown, exposing themselves to deadly levels of radiation. They all died within days.

In 2002 their story was made into a Hollywood blockbuster, K19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford.