A total of 9,147 individuals (unique viewers) watched some portion of the live streaming of Friday’s Manhattan Island Marathon Swim world record attempt according to the certified statistics on UStream.

While Mark Warkentin and Petar Stoychev, two Olympic swimmers, failed to break the record held by Shelley Taylor-Smith, Captain Tim Johnson, who provided the navigation for Shelley Taylor-Smith’s record-setting swim around Manhattan Island in 1995, offered his analysis of Friday’s Manhatan Island Marathon Swim world record attempt.

“Shelley took 24 minutes to get the Triboro Bridge from Mill Rock. Mill Rock which is a small island right at the junction of the Harlem and the East River where it turns east. She swam that section of the Harlem River at the start of her swim when the current was favorable..”

“In contrast, Mark swam into the Harlem River when it was in full flood (note: the Harlem flows south when it is flooding). Everything the Harlem had was being thrown at the swimmers. It’s approximately one mile Mark had to swim up the Harlem against the current and it took him about an hour. So he was approximately swimming 3 knots against the Harlem River’s 2 knots.”

Definitely an uphill battle. Mark’s perspective was explained below:

Watch the rest of LiveSwim.net‘s coverage of the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim world record attempt here.

Copyright © 2010 by Steven Munatones