In June, I enjoyed reading the story of Ross Edgeley's legendary 'Great British Swim'. Recounting that adventure in The Art of Resilience, Ross assembles a motley cast of athlete-adventurers spanning from Shackleton to Kipchoge. I love hearing those kinds of stories: feats so beyond comprehension your first question isn't "how?" but "why?" Which is why I was surprised Edgeley missed out some of the greatest stories of swimming endurance.
Women are at the forefront of marathon swimming, but the only women in Ross Edgeley's book are Harriet, the boat’s chef, and Ross' mum and girlfriend, who occasionally visit for emotional support.
For whatever reason (theories range from higher pain tolerance to a greater proportion of slow twitch muscles or perhaps higher concentration of buoyant brown fat around the hips) women not only do the biggest swims, but are also 12 to 14 percent faster in long races (anything over six hours). So many of these stories and achievements fly under the radar.
We tend to dwell on the fastest or the strongest athletes, but in his biography of Emil Zatopek, Endurance, Rick Broadbent argues that – at a species level – human beings are most impressive for their ability to keep going; we could never beat a gazelle at 100m but we are capable of running it to exhaustion. Broadbent goes on to make the case for Zatopek as the greatest runner of the modern era, but if we apply that logic to these swimmers a different picture emerges. The “obscure ultra-endurance sport women are quietly dominating” holds some of the planet’s bravest and most extraordinary athletes.
Below are four of the most inspiring swimmers I've learnt about preparing for my swim. Not only incomprehensible athletic achievements, many of these swims are great stories and more of the women responsible deserve to be household names.
Lynne Cox – “Chilly swim thaws Cold War relations”
Years before Lewis Pugh’s self-styled brand of ‘speedo diplomacy’, Lynne Cox’s legendary ice swim brought opposing sides of the Cold War together. The Bering Strait is a 4.3km stretch of water between Alaska and Siberia and, when Cox was preparing to swim across it in 1987, it separated the US and the USSR. By marathon swimming standards this was not a long swim (it took Cox just over two hours), but by any and all standards it was very, intensely cold: 6-7 °C. I remember swimming in the Cam at that temperature back in February: swimming, that is, for about ten minutes and spending the rest of the morning waiting for the icy pulsing deep in my chest to subside.
Imagine, then, staring out into a thick fog and water unthinkably cold, not even sure of the possibility of landing at the other side. Ross Edgeley talks about focussing on the controllable elements of an event and putting the uncontrollables out of your mind. Well, for Cox there were an awful lot of the later: her Inuit guides had stayed up drinking the night before and failed to turn up on time, and her contacts on the Soviet border were keeping a stone-faced silence. Only when a military patrol boat pulled up alongside Cox in the second half of the swim was it even clear they knew the swim was happening that day.
She succeeded that day, following which both Gorbachev and Reagan would cite Lynne Cox and her swim across the Bering Strait as a sporting story that helped ease tension between the two nations. On reaching Siberia, Cox was greeted by a party of Soviet athletes and invited for tea with them on the beach.
Diana Nyad – “Find a Way”
Swimming for 53 hours without a shark cage from Cuba to Florida, Diana Nyad pushed a sport to its most dangerous limits. It was also the end of a life’s work.
Nyad failed four times. Her first attempt, in 1978, was aborted when strong currents started throwing her against the bars of her shark cage. Nyad’s motto is ‘find a way’ and, 35 years and three more attempts later, she did, wearing a mask to keep jellyfish off her face and with a team of 35 operating an electrical field around her to keep sharks at bay.
Mercedes Gleitze – “The Vindication Swim”
Mercedes Gleitze was a part-time professional swimmer and in 1927 became the first British woman to swim the English Channel. At a time when crossing the Channel was an even greater unknown than it is today (only eleven swimmers had previously succeeded) Gleitze made it on her eighth attempt. To succeed after seven attempts speaks to an iron will, but Gleitze’s legacy was ultimately defined by her infamous ‘vindication swim’, just a fortnight after her successful crossing.
Four days after Gleitze’ s successful swim, Dublin born Dr. Dorothy Logan set a new record by two hours. Gleitze success was swept aside by the quicker swim and she was even asked to forfeit some of the prize money she had earnt. That is, until it was revealed that Logan had cheated: swimming for two hours before she was lifted from the water and went below deck for a nap. Logan got back in three miles from France, where she had to make a special effort of swimming slowly to avoid arriving impossibly sooner than expected.
Logan would go on to claim her fraudulent swim was intended to demonstrate the need for observers on future swims, but the damage was retroactively done to Mercedes Gleitze. The British press decided Logan’s school-boy trick showed it was impossible for a woman to swim the Channel and Gleitze’s attempt must also have been faked. In the face of popular derision and disbelief, Mercedes simply decided to do it again. Which is why she found herself setting out across the Channel yet again, only now in especially chilly mid-October water. That attempt failed, but the determination she demonstrated to the press junket watching from her support boat convinced them that she was the genuine article.
What came to be known as her ‘vindication swim’ not only restored confidence in her successful crossing but set the standard rules for every official marathon swim since.
Sarah Thomas – "FOUR TIMES!"
When plans for my swim started to calcify a little over a year ago, the English Channel was hitting mainstream news for the first time in many years. I remember seeing Sarah Thomas interview on a beach in Dover after completing four consecutive crossings of the channel. Two crossings is epic: imagine swimming to France ready to tumble-turn and head home. Three crossings is unimaginable, but Jon Erikson did it for the first time in 1981. Four crossings was simply impossible.
Sarah swam for 54 hours (three sunrises, two sunsets), but the unique challenges of the Channel make this even more impressive. The water is cold and changing tides meant Thomas had to keep a pace for the whole swim that makes your head spin. If I reach France in 11 and a half hours I’ll be counting my lucky stars and speeding back to England before I wake up from such a lovely dream. That was Sarah Thomas’ first leg.
I was lucky enough to sit in on a Zoom interview with Sarah a month into lockdown. Beyond unbelievable stories, Thomas is a seasoned expert of marathon swimming and recently became part of the Marathon Swimmers Federation Core Group. It was particularly helpful to hear stories of swims gone wrong. Her first, she said, was her worst because of poorly thought out nutrition. If I start to feel queasy on my crossing I will remember Sarah was sick for all of the first two ‘laps’ of her Channel four-way. She started to feel better at about the thirtieth hour. Another tip I’m taking from Sarah into my swim is M&Ms. One of the few feeds she was able to keep down during her swim, I’m bringing a bag just in case.