To be honest I really didn’t know what headline to use, to give this story the credit it deserves. It is about a great achievement of an athlete but also a massive tribute to this project. It might not be visible from the outside, but I invest so much time in Aquabike.World and there are times when I wonder, if people actually really care about it. But its stories like this, which show that there are people who do care about it, who have a great passion for the sports and take some extra motivation from what we do.
It’s 260 days ago – on the 4th of April 2025 – that Neil Semmel did his first race of the season. He took a clear win in the aquabike race of the Smithfield Sprint Triathlon, a local event in Smithfield, Virginia.
Over the next eight months Neil competed in no less than 28 more aquabike races. By the end of November, he reduced the gap to long time leader of the Aquabike.World Ranking Frank Erk to 541 points, taking no less than 21 wins, a national title in the standard distance plus a bronze medal in the middle-distance nationals as well as in the long-distance world championships in Spain in the process.
With only a few events in the United States in December, the goal to climb up to the top of the rankings by the end of the year seemed impossible. This changed though after a remarkable overall win in the aquabike race of the CLASH Daytona, which reduced the gap to only 131 points.
With only one more weekend of some smaller races left, it remained unclear whether the ambitious goal was actually achievable. For those who are not too familiar with our ranking system: The number of points you can get in a race depends on race distance and difficulty, but most of all on the number of participating athletes. In a race with only a handful of aquabikers competing, you might or might not get more than 131 points for a win.
Instead of going south, where smaller events in Florida and Arizona with probably more comfortable weather conditions would have been on the calendar, he decided to race at the Frozen Hare in Broomall, Pennsylvania. This race offers two options for aquabikers. The short course with a 1.5 km swim and a 12-mile bike leg, and the long course with a 5 km swim (!) and a 23-mile bike segment. The start of the event is self-seeded – which means you can start any of the offered race distances anytime you like after 9 am, as long as you finish before 3 pm. Or – if you’re crazy enough – you can do both within the event’s start and finish time. And that’s exactly what Neil did, to maximise his chances to gain more than the desired 131 points.
And he was right to do so. With only one more competitor in the long course aquabike, the 120 points from this race would have him missed the lead by the narrowest of margins. With a few more competitors there were 140 points to grab in the short course race, where – of course – Neil took another win to finally climb up into the top position in the Aquabike.World Men’s Ranking.
What a remarkable season!
- 32 races
- 24 overall wins
- 1 x Gold and 1 x Bronze at national championships
- Bronze Medal in the Long Distance Aquabike World Championships
- 8237 points
- #1 in Aquabike.World Ranking
Chapeau, Neil!
Just got the #1 World Ranking OVERALL in Aquabike.World rankings. A dream come true to achieve this goal against so many great athletes.54 Overall Wins in the last 3 1/2 years. Had a great 2025 Season with 24 Wins, 1 Worlds Bronze Podium, and 2 National podiums with one being a defending of the National Championship.Thank you to my family, friends, colleagues, and sponsors for the continued support!!Neil’s facebook post about his achievement
After sitting on top of the rankings for 812 days Frank Erk had to make way for a new leader. However, he can console himself with a few records. No other athlete has been leading the rankings for such a long time since it was introduced. He is still the undisputed leader of the all-time rankings (where all races since 2021 are counted), with Neil now sitting in second place almost 7000 points behind. And: he also kept the record for gaining the most points within one year. In 2023 Frank ended the season with 8240 points – a record that Neil missed by only three points in 2025.
I take my hat off to these two great athletes and hope that we will see them in many more aquabike races in the coming years.