A race where contestants use inflatable sex dolls or willies as floats had 400 swimmers turn up to show off their strokes.

Newsflash spoke to organiser Dmitry Bulavinov – “a physicist by training” – in an exclusive interview.

He said that after several qualifying races that included “319 men and 81 women”, the final leg included the five fastest men and the three fastest women.

He explained that the competition, called the “Bubble Baba Challenge”, was first held in 2003 and continued until 2011. But it could not take place from 2012 to 2020 due to the construction of a large railway bridge across the river.

He resumed holding the event in 2021 and, on 30th July, he held the 2022 edition of the race, which sees men and women swimming 600 metres in the river with blow-up sex dolls and inflatable penises.

The event takes place on the Vuoksi river on its course through the village of Losevo, in the Leningrad region of Russia, not far from Saint Petersburg.

Bulavinov, 51, said that the water was “warm enough”, adding that “no one gets cold”. He said that this year, the river was a comfortable “18 degrees Celsius”.

He explained (in Russian): “Many girls use inflatable men, some inflatable phalluses and other inflatable things from sex shops.

“But all these options are much more expensive than inflatable women, so for those participants who do not have their own watercraft, we provide inflatable women, the cheapest and not suitable for anything but swimming.”

He added that the slogan of the competition is “a rubber woman is nothing more than a means of transportation”, adding “thus, we promote traditional values.”

He said that the winners of the race were, for the women: “1st place – Maria Levanova (#174) on a watercraft named ‘Suffering Machine’ with a result of 4 minutes 24 seconds; 2nd place – Daria Borodina (#513) on ‘Lena’, 5 minutes 29 seconds; and 3rd place – Anna Obraztsova (#149) on ‘Sh*t-Pie’, 6 minutes 13 seconds.”

And for the men, Bulavinov said that the winners were: “1st place – Vladimir Zaitsev (#206) on ‘Zayka’, 4 minutes 14 seconds; 2nd place – Konstantin Orlov (#386) on ‘The Shrew’, 4 minutes 15 seconds; and 3rd place – Viktor Korsak (#155) on ‘Princess Anastasis’, 4 minutes 30 seconds.”

He said that the inflatables’ names were given by the participants themselves during the registration process.

Bulavinov, who works at a “large financial company” when he is not organising sex doll races, said the event went “very well”.

He added: “There was a lot of music and dancing. And even the rain promised for the whole day passed us by.”