In 1997, the highly popular American TV series called Seinfeld was in its 8th of 9 seasons, staring Jerry Seinfeld as himself, Jason Alexander as George Costanza, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine Benes, and Michael Richards as Cosmo Kramer.
In the 152nd episode of the series, the fictitious character Kramer, starts to do regular open water training swims in the East River around Manhattan Island.
A few months after this episode aired in April 1997, the 45.9 km Manhattan Island Marathon Swim was held in July where 28-year-old Australian Tammy Van Wisse [shown above] similarly swam (raced) in the East River and eventually held her lead down the Hudson River to beat David Quartermain by 3 minutes and 14 others competitors.
1997 Manhattan Island Marathon Swim Results
- Tammy Van Wisse 7 hours 15 minutes
- David Quartermain 7 hours 18 minutes
- David Boudreau 7 hours 25 minutes
- Kris Rutford 7 hours 26 minutes
- Jim Mellow 7 hours 35 minutes
- Laura Zovickian 7 hours 47 minutes
- David Kramer 7 hours 50 minutes
- Antonio Argüelles 7 hours 52 minutes
- Duncan Adamson 7 hours 56 minutes
- John Langton 8 hours 6 minutes
- Joe Hutto 8 hours 7 minutes
- Jamie Tout 8 hours 27 minutes
- Bill Reichle 8 hours 27 minutes
- Benn Kramer 8 hours 58 minutes
- Loretta Cox 9 hours 7 minutes
- Lawrence Hoffman 9 hours 53 minutes
It was great to see open water swimming gain some national airtime 11 years before the 2008 Beijing Olympics 10 km marathon swim.
For more information and the historical results of all the races around Manhattan Island (both the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, the 20 Bridges Swim, and the 40 Bridges Swim), visit the LongSwims database here.
Daniel Wolfe from Oakland, California wrote an article in today’s Washington Post entitled Swimming the Triple Crown is a feat like no other where the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim was referenced (read here).
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