Ross Edgley Swims Back To The Future in Mallorca

75,000 meters into Day Two of Ross Edgley‘s swim at Best Centre Sports in Mallorca, his broad smiles suddenly turned into grimaces. The transformation from joy to fear was tough to witness. His laughter was replaced worry. His joyful ambiance of swimming well turned south.

The 38-year-old bravely forged on, but his 100m splits were gradually getting slower and slower. Something was wrong. All the positive vibes were gone.

Edgley had previously injured his shoulder a week ago, but there were no lingering effects until the late afternoon of Day Two of his 7-day pool challenge. He stopped more frequently and would grab his right arm in obvious distress.

As confidence turned to doubt, coaches Lauren Quigley and Chris Morgan offered Edgley all kinds of advice. He attempted to slightly change his stroke mechanics in order to relieve the pain – but nothing seemed to work.

The tendons in his right arm flared up. The pain gradually became too much and his pace slowed to over 1:50 per 100m. He got out of the water and tried icing. He tried KAATSU. He got a massage and physio Megan Wright started giving his treatments on the pool deck. Nothing worked. Things were most definitely looking grim.

After tossing and turning over a sleepless night, Edgley decided to take a nap poolside. There was nothing much more to do.

Steven Munatones recalled, “I honestly thought the swim was over. I knew Ross would awake and try to give it another go. But there was no way he could continue to swim on with that kind of pain. Everyone waited and was trying to figure out what to do next.

30 minutes passed. Then Ross emerged from the pool office after his brief nap. The bounce in his step and the smile on his face had returned. Somehow, someway, something had changed. Ross hopped back in the pool and started to swim one lap of slow freestyle followed by one lap of faster backstroke.

Without explanation, he was now swimming at a faster pace on his back than he is swimming freestyle. But the made-up mind is a wonderful thing. The most important ‘muscle’ in an athlete’s body is between their ears. Over the decades, I have witnessed remarkable swims performed by all kinds of swimmers. This was one of the most incredible transformations.”

Edgley admitted, “I haven’t swum backstroke since I was 13.”

Over the next hour, he started to pick up his pace from the low to mid 1:50’s to the low 1:40’s every 100 meters. He looked smooth on his back. Instead of exclusively hammering freestyle, swimming backstroke helped provide relief on his tendons. His backstroke was faster than his freestyle and even his freestyle looked better.

Miracles do happen.

Edgley was back. Literally.