The Long Way Round the City
Jenny Holland
Posted online: Sunday, 24 June 2001
One warm weekend last August, I joined more than 40 people in New York City to do something strange - and in this city that’s saying a heckuva lot. Dressed in nothing but Speedos, lime-green bathing caps, and goggles, we took a brisk stroll near Wall Street among more-fully-dressed pedestrians, plus more than a few rollerbladers and cyclists. And then we did something even stranger: We plunged into the Hudson.
Until that point, my knowledge of the river was limited largely to what I’d learned on occasional walks along its banks and from movies set in Manhattan. But I’d never actually been in the Hudson. When I heard about a new, mile-long swim in its water, I decided to take the plunge and to put my lap-swimming at the Y to some use.
I couldn’t wait to tell my friends about my intention, but their reactions didn’t encourage me. Responses ranged from suspicion ("Is it safe?") and disbelief ("You’re kidding!") to concern ("Don’t you need to be inoculated for that?") and shock ("Aren’t there bodies floating around in there?").
It was easy to see why they thought that way. Before the Hudson River flows into New York Harbor and then the Atlantic, it skirts not only Manhattan but also the Bronx and Jersey City, making it a gathering place for all of Gotham’s Flotsam. At least that’s the way it used to be. Thanks to antipollution laws passed in the 1970s, the river is cleaner now than it has been in more than a century, I found out. Swimmers are returning to its waters (as are fishermen, even the commercial kind) and loving it.
The 20th Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, at 28 1/2 miles the longest event of its kind, was made even more difficult yesterday by a storm that pounded contestants throughout the morning.
Race officials ordered swimmers out of the water twice when thunder, lightning, pelting rain and poor visibility made continuing dangerous.
Morgan Filler, 25, of Seattle, won the race in 7 hours 49 minutes 46 seconds. She led throughout, and at times seemed to be moving more quickly than the traffic on the West Side Highway.
"I'm glad it's over, but I'm also ecstatic," Filler said as she was congratulated by family and onlookers at Pier 6 in Battery Park. The storm was not fun, she said, "but I got to see my coaches get wet."
This year's marathon had its largest field: 78 people, comprising 30 individual swimmers and 8 six-person relay teams. They were ages 17 to 59, and some traveled from as far as Bombay to participate.
Igor D'Souza of Brazil was second, in 8:01:49. Vonie Oerman of Englewood, Colo., was third, in 8:05:39. Competitors said that being removed from the water twice broke the rhythm of the race. The record for the race is 5:45:25, set by Shelley Taylor-Smith in 1995.
The swimmers jumped in at the tip of Manhattan in Battery Park, where the temperature of the water yesterday was 65 degrees. They followed the Tide up the East River before returning down the Hudson. This year the contestants' bright bathing caps and support boats provided splashes of color on an otherwise dreary day.
The Manhattan marathon is not for the squeamish.
Contestants must at times swim with Debris and alongside large vessels, including cruise ships and barges, in the heavily trafficked waterway.
Tammy Van Wisse, 32, of Australia, who won the individual race in 1997 and this year helped win the relay with Team Millennium, said the water seemed dirtiest in the Harlem River, where she swam past a dead rat. Near the Morris Heights section of the Bronx, police officers on the river bank asked the boats going past them to "look out for a body."
Some of those taking part have been in even rougher waters, however. Kevin Murphy, 52, of London, has swum across the English Channel 32 times. "My constant thought when I'm in there is, how do I get out?" he said before the race. "But if it's not difficult, then there's no sense of achievement." |
- New York Times
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