It's 1-1 between them this summer but former world surf lifesaving champion Brent Foster doubts he'll be heading to the capital this weekend to break the deadlock.
Foster beat Wellingtonian Ben Campbell-Macdonald in last month's Paihia Classic, part of the State Ocean swimming series, but the 31-year-old policy analyst with the National Health Committee yesterday got one back with a commanding performance in the annual 4km Round the Mount swim.
Campbell-Macdonald won his third title in the swim swim Pilot Bay to the main beach, heading off Foster by almost two minutes, running up the beach in 47m 28.68s, with Foster calling on his renown surf skills to pull clear of Mason Pickering and finish in 50m 29.47s.
Pickering was 3.5 seconds back, with French lifeguard Emmanualle Bescheron, who is based at Mount Maunganui for four months over the summer, clocking 51m 2.15s to be first female and fourth overall.
Campbell-Macdonald and Foster have forged a healthy rivalry, with the 41-year-old Aucklander winning bragging rights by a minute at the Paihia Classic between Russell and Paihia. He tried to stay on Campbell-Macdonald's feet yesterday but was burned off within 500m of the start.
"Man, you've improved so much since the Bay of Islands," said Foster, who holds the Port of Tauranga Half and New Zealand Ironman swim records. "I tried to pick you up through the entrance but you were gone."
Campbell-Macdonald will line up in this weekend's 3.3km Capital Classic in Oriental Bay but couldn't tempt Foster to head south for a tiebreaker.
Yesterday he was more than three minutes off Moss Burmester's 2005 race record of 44m 28s but credits the Round the Mount swim for getting him back in the water seven years ago.
"I come up here especially for this, it's worth the trip, not just for the swim [he also won Saturday's Murray Dingle bridge-to-bridge swim in Tauranga Harbour] but also for the marine life you see while you're in the water.
"I was keeping an eye out for any debris [from the Rena] but it was real fishy out there today, a bit like a soup with what looked like heaps of krill in the water."
Campbell-Macdonald was surprised Foster didn't sit tighter, although the'98 world champion surf athlete is recovering from a virus he picked up after the Paihia race.
Foster hasn't competed at the Mount for several years but has fond memories of the main beach, having won numerous New Zealand surf, tube rescue and belt race titles there.
"And I'm usually a starter in the Half too as a swimmer for one of the teams, only I didn't get the call from Carl [cyclist Carl Murray] this year and entries had closed by the time we got organised."
Bescheron, who swam for France until she switched to surf lifesaving as a 17-year-old, is clocking up 5km each morning in the pool at Baywave but said the currents and navigation required to get around Mauao made yesterday's swim tricky.
The 26-year-old is based at Hossegor in southwest France and will compete for Mt Maunganui at March's national surf lifesaving champs in Gisborne before heading home, hoping to win a medal in at least one of the run-swim-run, tube rescue, surf race, surf ski or ironwoman.
]She'll be back downunder in November competing for France at her third world surf lifesaving championships in Australia.
Campbell-Macdonald won the bridge-to-bridge swim in 11m 23s, holding off Adam Simpson (11m 56s) comfortably, but it was tight in the female race with Jessica Miller and Cara Ryan swimming stroke for stroke until the final 100m, when Miller pulled away to win by three seconds.