A former world-ranked endurance swimmer, who has swum the English Channel and Cook Strait, will be on the start line for the inaugural Legend of the Lake event at Tikitapu (Blue Lake).
The big event is being staged on Saturday, February 28 in Rotorua and has been added to the popular New Zealand Ocean Swim Series this year.
It is also bound to bring back memories for Grainne Moss who completed seven epic Rotorua swims back in 2002.
Moss was regional manager at Carter Holt Harvey Forests, and living in Rotorua, when she swam the lengths of seven Rotorua lakes in seven days in 2002. In doing so, she raised money for the Rotorua Volunteer Coastguard and Surf Lifesaving Bay of Plenty while helping promote water safety and the importance of not swimming alone.
Fifteen years earlier, when she was 17, the Belfast-born swimmer became the first Irish woman to swim the English Channel, then represented Ireland at international level and in 2001 swam Cook Strait.