Nick Hungerford nicked it at the finish to claim the Mario McClarnon cup

A naturally gifted musician, Mario piped the Christmas Day swimmers onto the board for many decades.  A true gent and great friend to all that had the honour to swim in his company.  Mario -  1932 - 2007.

Mike Olizar wrote the following just before the 2019 race -

"Mario was a good man.

"Mario worked as a signalman at Clapham Junction.  On my way back from work in the 1960s/70s I would often exchange greetings with him in the days when one could open a train carriage window. He'd be pushing weights in or by the Windsor /Hounslow/Reading line signal box. In my mind's eye I see him in shorts and vest doing pull-ups hanging outside the signal box window.  His daughter Anna, though I always knew her as Maria, told me he had on one occasion dropped his weights on the signal box levers blocking all rail traffic. Poor commuters!!

"Depending on shifts Mario would, whatever the weather, early in the morning jog up barefoot from Clapham Junction.  He'd climb over the Lido area fence for a very early dip. This would have been well before 06.00 and before Jock Fee had opened up.  Wet footmarks left behind showed that Mario had been there."

In 1981 Mario ran the first London Marathon, complete with kilt and bagpipes, barefoot and bare-chested, stopping occasionally along the way to pipe the crowd and collect money for charity. An accompanying friend carried two buckets for the many coins tossed in for the good causes, getting heavier and heavier as the 26 miles, and Mario's playing, progressed.  His accomplice said, "by the finish it seemed my arms had grown by two or three inches".

Daughter Maria noted that Mario ran from Vauxhall to the start at Blackheath, completed the marathon, then ran back to Vauxhall.  Mario was an ultra-marathon runner before such things were invented!

Tragically, Mario was knocked down by a teenager on a motor scooter when crossing the road.  He survived but spent the last 18 months of his life in Stoke Manderville hospital paralyzed from the neck down.  He died in 2007.

Anna swam in the Serpentine as a little girl, being taught to swim by dad Mario during the school holidays.  She went on to race with us in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  She also trained for a successful Channel crossing, joining the elite "24 Hour Club".  Anna said that her swim speed owed much to the fact that it was Dad who taught her to swim during summer school holidays in The Serpentine.

On Monday 2 September 2002, at 8.43 pm Anna set off from Dover for her Channel attempt.  She landed in France 24 hours and 8 minutes later, at 8.51 pm, Tuesday 3 September.  When asked if the swim took so long for reasons such as weather and tides, Anna replied “no, I’m just slow.  It costs a lot to swim the English Channel and I wanted my money’s worth.  What’s more, I was enjoying the view.”

Mario was a man of great generosity of spirit often collecting for charity in his kilt playing the bagpipes. A famous story is his arrest outside Selfridges. He had been piping away and ordered by a WPC (in the days that one had WPCs ) to move on. She had come back, found him still playing and arrested him. Hauled before the magistrate's court the beak dismissed the case saying how much he enjoyed listening to Mario when he frequently passed him and that how, in an article in "The Times", he had read that all his busking money collected was not retained by Mario but donated to charity.  The case hit the national press.

Mario would often be mistaken for Jimmy Savile, an unintended look-alike and was occasionally stopped in the street and asked for an autograph.  These were always signed "Mario McClarnon", to the puzzlement (and sometimes indignation) of the autograph hunter!

At the time this was seen as an amusing compliment. Mario died long before Savile's real life was exposed.