During the 1970’s, International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame inductee Joe Grossman wrote a column called ‘Professional Marathon Swimming’ in Swimming World Magazine. Grossman served during that era as the Secretary of the World Professional Marathon Swimming Federation and regularly reported on the professional marathon swimming circuit – and other interesting tidbits from open water swimming history.

As a public information officer by profession, Grossman traveled the world on his day job and took these opportunities to promote marathon swimming, to establish personnel contacts, and lay the necessary groundwork to bring unity to the marathon swimming community.

He wrote in the March 1972 edition, “Marathon swimming appears to be a sport of such great importance that the Russians have laid claim to ‘inventing’ it!

While doing research on the origins and history of long-distance swimming, I unearthed a United Press dispatch datelined Moscow, August 18, 1949. The piece, in its entirety, read:

Russians not only swim farther and faster than anybody else, but they started long-distance swimming back in 1773, a Soviet ‘Sports Master’ claimed today. lskander Faizulin, a prominent Soviet swimmer, wrote in the trade union newspaper Trud that a shipwrecked Russian sailor stroked 14.8 miles (23.8 km) in 12 hours off the African coast 194 years ago.

Another pre-revolutionary Russian [swimmer], Leonid Alexeevich Romanchenko, swam [47.8 km] in the Caspian Sea-Baku area in 24 hours and 12 minutes [in 1913], the ‘Sports Master’ reported. This is faster, he said, than anyone has swum the English Channel.

In August, 1953, the same Sports Master Faizulin reportedly swam [201 km down] the Amur River [in the] USSR from Stepanovo to Khabarovsk, in 26 hours 8.39 minutes. That indicates that Comrade Faizulin is a better swimmer than a researcher.“

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