The famed Maratona del Golfo Capri-Napoli is a 36 km professional marathon swim from the island of Capri to Napoli on the mainland of Italy. It is annually one of the World’s Top 100 Island Swims and one of the longest running professional marathon swimming competitions in the world.
After swimming between Napoli and Capri Island in 12 hours in 1949, two Italian swimmers Aldo Fioravanti and Cesare Alfieri inspired the initial crossing and set in motion the first official race that was held in 1954.
The elegant timepiece shown above was given to finishers between 1988 and 1992.
Yuko Matsuzaki represented Japan during those years and recently came across the old timepiece at her parents’ home in Tokyo. A long-time prolific swimmer on the professional marathon swimming circuit in the 1980’s and 1990’s, Matsuzaki finished the 1989 Maratona del Golfo Capri-Napoli in 9 hours 57 minutes, the 1990 Capri-Napoli in 10 hours 2 minutes, and the 1992 edition in 8 hours 46 minutes.
Matsuzaki, named as one of the World’s 50 Most Adventurous Open Water Women in 2015, remembers her first professional marathon swimming race below:
For more information about Capri-Napoli, visit here.
For results over the decades, visit the Marathon Swimmers Federation database here.
The event offers a unique award that takes its rightful place among the other unusually creative awards in the open water swimming world:
- Belt buckles at the SCAR Swim Challenge in Arizona, USA
- Conch tropies at the Race For The Conch Eco-SeaSwim in Turks & Caicos
- Walking sticks and woodals at the Kingdom Swim in Vermonte
- Paper crown for Ice Kilometers swimmers at the International Ice Swimmiing Association Ireland National Championships
- For Triple Crowners (English Channel + Catalina Channel + Around Manhattan Island)
- MSF Spork + MSF Navigator Award from the Marathon Swimmers Federation
- Cherrywood plaque for South End Rowing Club members for their North Channel crossing
- For H20PLAY Swim Series winners
- For 2-way North Channel relay from Northern Ireland to Scotland and back to Northern Ireland
- For Hawaiian Christmas Looong Distance Invitational Rough-H2O Swim finishers on Oahu
- For finishers of the Nevis to St. Kitts Cross-Channel Swim
- English Channel award for Shubham Vanmali
- Unique fish awards at the Los Cabos Open Water Challenge
- Rhinoceros trophy for the 8 Mile Charity Club at the Midmar Mile
- North Channel crossing by the Irish Long Distance Swimming Association
- Gaston Memorial Swim awards
- Maratona del Golfo Capri-Napoli finisher timepieces
- Bermuda Four Corners Challenge hydration in Bermuda
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