Marathon Swimming Miles to Swim Before They Sleep By Kari Lydersen

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Sid Cassidy had a bucket of human waste dumped on him as he swam in the Nile.
P.H. Mullen watched a fisherman pull a shark out of the water as he swam under a bridge in Atlantic City.
Samantha Chabotar was pulled out of a race because she was so cold she couldn’t remember her own phone number.
P.H. Mullen fought a brutal wind all the way across the English Channel only to have the waves pummel him to a bloody pulp on the rocky shore of France.
Experiences such as these are par for the course in marathon open water swimming, a grueling and lonely sport that pits athletes against each other, nature and themselves in races lasting from six to 15 hours.
“The whole sport is this translation of body and mind into one goal,” said Mullen, who became the 12th fastest person ever to swim the 23-mile English Channel with his time of 8 hours and 25 minutes. “You’re just giving it everything.”
It seems like a thankless sport — the hours and hours of sensory deprivation and exhaustion compounded by obstacles such as currents, tides and dangerous sea life. Swimmers often spend months training for a race only to have to stop halfway because of hypothermia, inclement weather or Montezuma’s Revenge.
However, there are a handful of hardy athletes who travel the world competing in professional and amateur marathon swim races ranging from 25 to 90 kilometers. Though they compete for thousands of dollars in prize money and spots on U.S. national team, they all agree it is the challenge of conquering an ocean, river or lake that motivates them.
“Its not whether you win or how much money you get that matters,” said national team coach John Flanagan. “Just being a part of the whole thing is a rush.”
Chabotar, a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh and a 1994 World Championship team member, said she loves the freedom and challenge of open water swimming.
“It’s so amazing to be out in the ocean or a lake and just keep swimming,” she said. “There’s no real end, and no walls to get in the way. It’s so peaceful to be out in the wide open water with no one around.”
People who haven’t experienced the thrill of swimming from England to France or stroking 57 miles down a jungle river usually don’t understand the appeal of endless hours of putting one arm in front of the other, however.
“A lot of people say I’m pretty crazy for doing these swims,” agreed national team member and Florida lifeguard Wayne Snellgrove, 23. “I kind of agree.”
Mullen also said the fact that he willingly endures the extreme conditions of the races sometimes causes him to doubt his own sanity.
“A lot of times my body temperature will drop down to 91, and it’s at 93 that you lose memory and rational thought,” he said. “That says a lot about how stupid we are to do this.”
Excruciating cold, such as the 52-degree water of the English Channel, is only one of the obstacles Mother Nature throws at swimmers trying to conquer her seas and lakes. Changeable and forceful currents and tides, huge waves and lightning storms can make an already tough race almost impossible.
“With the wind going one way and the current going the other way it’s absolutely brutal,” Mullen said. “It creates waves that are five feet tall and stand straight up.”
While waves are more dramatic, it is the invisible but insistent pull of the current that is an even greater obstacle. Half the people who fail to complete the English Channel get within sight of the French shoreline but are beaten by a vicious current parallel to the shore. Former Air Force Academy swimmer and national champion Karen Burton swam in a race in Italy where the current caused her to swim in place for several hours, and University of Pittsburgh coach Marian Cassidy had to cling to a dock for dear life as the tide rushed out in Atlantic City.
“It was really crazy — you had to hold onto the docks and pull yourself around,” said Cassidy, who was once ranked second in the world and now coaches Chabotar at Pitt. “A guy from Argentina didn’t speak any English so he didn’t understand what to do. He thought ‘All is lost!’”
Along with the hazards produced by water and wind, aquatic animals such as sharks and jellyfish add a fear factor to the swims. Competitors frequently emerge from races with faces red and swollen from jellyfish stings, and shark sightings are especially common in races in Hawaii and Australia.
“If you hit a jellyfish you just have to scream and keep going,” Burton said. “Some women wear two-piece suits so they can get the jellyfish out more easily.”
In the English Channel Sid Cassidy saw “huge jellyfish as big as garbage bags,” along with “a big box like a giant coffin floating by.”
While jellyfish stings are common and painful but not deadly, the threat of a shark is more serious.
“Once when I was swimming out there by myself I saw dark shadows racing below me and fins all around me,” said Wayne Snellgrove, 23, a national team member and Florida lifeguard. “I thought it was a school of hammerheads and they were just playing with me before having me for breakfast. I rolled on my back and thought, ‘Make it quick.’ But it turned out to be a pod of dolphins.”
Tiny invisible life forms pose an even greater danger than sharks, however. Gamma globulin shots are required to guard against hepatitis in U.S. venues such as the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia and the Intracoastal Waterway in Florida, and cases of diarrhea are common from the water in India, Egypt and South America.
“I made the mistake of getting in the Nile a few days before the race,” said Sid Cassidy. “I ended up with a 103 fever and Montezuma’s Revenge. It was the only race I didn’t finish.”
Though risks like sharks and sudden storms make training alone dangerous, the low participation rate of the sport sometimes makes it a necessity. Even in races, the length of the events and the vastness of the bodies of water mean competitors spend many hours without seeing another swimmer.
However, each competitor is accompanied by a coach in a motor boat or canoe who keeps them on course and gives them Gatorade or a banana every twenty minutes. The coach can write messages to the swimmer on a dry erase board and keep an eye on the other competitors with binoculars.
“I like my coach to write jokes and riddles on the board,” Chabotar said. “That usually keeps me busy for a while.”
Though the escort boat is supposed to lead the way for the swimmer, rough water and other unexpected fiascoes often leave the swimmer on their own in a strange river or the open ocean.
Matt Honan got a mile ahead of his boat and all the other swimmers on his first marathon race, a 20-mile swim around Key west that he entered on a whim after a night of bar-hopping.
“I couldn’t see a lot so basically I got lost and swam around the wrong island,” said Honan, a 1992 Georgia Tech graduate. “When I got back to the race the guy in my support boat thought I had died. That would have been especially bad for him because I was his ride back home.”
And at a race in Argentina, Washington State University swim coach Jay Benner was in the lead when his boat sunk, forcing him to navigate the twists and turns of the river on his own. Benner’s problems were exacerbated by the other boat drivers, who blocked him so that an Argentine native and national hero could win.
This may have been cheating, but it still isn’t as bad as the nationalistic experience Sid Cassidy had in Egypt. Though race organizers begged him to come to the Nile event and paid for his airfare and lodging, they wanted their swimmers to beat the top-ranked American. Despite a severe case of diarrhea, Cassidy was leading the race, when disgruntled fans watching from houseboats started throwing bottles at him. One even dumped sewage on him as he swam by.
“The Egyptians were supposed to win,” he said. “I lost my lead when I stopped to yell at these people, and I got a bucket of feces dumped on me.”
Behavior of this sort would be laughable in the U.S., where the sport is overlooked by the press and even national competitions only draw a handful of spectators. But in countries such as Egypt, Canada, Australia, Italy, Argentina and Brazil, marathon swimming is front-page news and the competitors are national celebrities. Mullen said the president of Argentina presented the trophies for a race there, and TV stations interrupted their regular programming to broadcast results.
}Once when I was swimming out there by myself I saw dark shadows racing below me and fins all around me~
“The whole town turns out for this thing,” said Flanagan of an Argentine race that attracted 150,000 spectators. “There were all-night parties and we rode in parades through the town. People would come just to watch us eat and they’d grab the swimmers’ caps and goggles at the end for souvenirs. My swimmer didn’t even finish the race and she was treated like a celebrity.”
“They just think you’re the best thing in the world,” agreed Marian Cassidy. “You spend all week going to press conferences and signing autographs.”
She said the elaborate and unique awards and gifts given to the swimmers also make the races special.
“There was a seven-stage race in the Italian Riviera where we swam to a new town each day,” said Cassidy, 27. “Each city gave you stuff from that area, like really neat plates and homemade olive oil.”
And it is not only the winner who gets the spoils.
The race in Atlantic City gives a diamond ring to the last woman to finish, and some races award a trophy for best “Fair Play.” The prize money, which can total up to $8,000 for the winner, is also distributed in quirky ways.
“There are sponsors who will say something like, ‘The 13th person around my house gets $500,’” Cassidy said.
But material awards aside, it is the satisfaction of overcoming natural obstacles and mental anguish to finish a race that motivates the swimmers.
“At least three times during any given race the words ‘Why am I doing this’ and ‘This is the last time I’m doing this’ go through my head,” Chabotar said. “But when I reach the finish those words disappear because the satisfaction and joy of finishing a 25K is overwhelming.”
George Washington University senior and 1995 national champion Bambi Bowman feels the same way.
“In a race in North Carolina there were thousands of jellyfish everywhere and all I could see was this kayak that I was following straight out to sea and I thought ‘what in insanity’s name am I doing here?’” she said. “But after the race I thought it was fun, except for the sunburn, suit rubs and dehydration. I like doing something not many people are willing to do.”
“Its incredible to get in before sunrise and get out some 11 hours and 60,000 arm strokes later when the sun is down,” added Mullen. “It’s just a dream surfing into the coast at the end — you’re ecstatic.”