Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California.
The annual Manhattan Island Marathon Swim is this Saturday, starting at 7:25 am near Wall Street. With the water temperature around 65°F (ranging from 17-19°C), the athletes will surface chop, substantial tidal flows and boat traffic for the entire 8-9 hour event.
Besides the relay swimmers, this year’s event includes an extraordinarily solid group of marathon swimmers with a plethora of long-distance swims under their belt. Two of the younger swimmers in the field, Chloë McCardel and Jen Schumacher, will certainly be pushed by their older (and wiser?) competitors.
The international field includes English and Catalina Channel swimmers from as far away as Australia. After getting through the highly selective qualification process, the group is representative of the highest echelon of marathon swimming world.
The women include Rachel Golub (33), Rondi Davies (40), Jaimie Monahan (30) and Tobey-Anne Saracino (34) of New York, Amanda Hunt (41) and Chloë McCardel (25) of Australia, Sakura Hingley (28) of UK, Kathrin Raymond (31) of Colorado, Jen Schumacher (24) of California (left) and Samantha Simon (20) of Wisconsin.
The men are equally formidable.
The pack will include Dave Barra (45 years old), Mo Siegel (58) and Lance Ogren (39) of New York, Jim Bayles (58) of Connecticut, Jaime Caballero (35) of Spain, Jeffrey Cleveland (30) of California, Dougal Hunt (30) and Stephen Junk (49) and Andrew Page (38) of Australia, Rob Kent (45) of Canada, Craig Lenning (31) of Colorado, Julien Leonard (32) of France, Jose Serra (36) of Guatemala, David Strasburg (44) of Virginia, Kristian Rutford (50) of Nebraska and Jordan Waxman (45) of New Jersey.
Rutford is returning to a venue he knows well. He holds the fastest time for a man around Manhattan (5 hours 53 minutes and 57 seconds in 1992) and the fastest time for a man in the reverse direction (17 hours 48 minutes). But in a hint of what may occur this Saturday, Rutford’s records are just slightly behind women: the overall record in the counterclockwise direction is 5 hours 45 minutes and 25 seconds set by Shelley Taylor-Smith in 1995 and 11 hours 48 minutes in the clockwise direction set by Liz Fry in 2009.
Photos are courtesy of NYC Swim.
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