Swimming the Triple Crown is a feat like no other

The honor of the Triple Crown is for those who: swim across the English Channel (20.5 miles), cross the Catalina Channel off the coast of California (20 miles), and circumnavigate the whole of Manhattan Island in New York City (28.5 miles). Only 292 swimmers achieved this feat and few, two times over, according to data up through the end of 2022.

The earliest reference to the Triple Crown comes from the Albuquerque Journal in 1988 when profiling the late Ashby Harper in his intention to swim the three routes. The first person to complete the Triple Crown, though, was Alison Streeter, according to LongSwimsDB.

Each swim takes the better part of a day to complete. Together they take 35 hours on average and years of planning. And that’s if conditions cooperate. Strong currents, cold temperatures, fields of jellyfish, high winds, broken down boats, and low visibility all contend against the ease of each passage. Swimmers are allowed: a swim cap, goggles and swimsuit.

Protected by just a Speedo can make for a brisk voyage from England to France. The English Channel sits between 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 Celsius) to a balmy 65 Fahrenheit (18 Celsius) during the July to September swim season.

In 1875, Captain Matthew Webb became the first known swimmer to cross the channel. The British daredevil made the passage over two days, one with a jellyfish sting and another a sip of brandy later. Today the swim can take anywhere from the record six hours fifty-five minutes held by Trent Grimsey to almost 27 hours.

The swim’s variability is owed to the strength of the currents. An athlete will encounter the flooding North Sea tide, pushing them north once they depart from Dover before a mid-channel meeting of the switching ebb tide, which pulls them south.

Argüelles brings water and stones from his training waters in native Mexico or Aquatic Park in San Francisco before he starts. It’s a ritual. “The only thing I ask the water is that it allows me to swim,” says Argüelles. To him “it’s the only place you can still be a kid,” the ocean is a place where women and men of all ages and body types can swim. At 40 years old, he swam the channel in 18 hours. At 50, 12 hours and 52 minutes and at 62, 12 hours and 58 minutes — although he says never ask someone their times. When Argüelles turns 65 next year, he will attempt to complete the Double-Triple, a to-and-back of each Triple Crown swim.

Have you practiced urinating during a swim? This is a question asked of a Catalina Channel applicant. Knowing your bodily functions is necessary in these journeys. Additionally, Suzie Dods, a Triple Crown swimmer and coach, advises to remember the four P’s: “You gotta be able to pay … you need to know it’s okay to puke and poop… and you can swim through a period.” As for pee, knowing one’s frequency during a swim helps keep ahead of dehydration. Bathroom breaks matter, since half of all successful Catalina crossings take 12 hours to complete.

The midnight start makes this swim unique. If an athlete can overcome the fear of swimming in the dark, they may meet bioluminescent waters; dinoflagellate phytoplankton emit emerald light when disturbed as swimmers’ strokes reach toward the port of Los Angeles. As dawn comes, Pacific bottlenose dolphin pods may investigate, flying fish leap ahead and migrating gray whales breach. As for risk of a great white shark? That’s just an urban legend, says Argüelles. No swimmer we spoke to recalled an incident of a shark attack during a Triple Crown swim.

Stève Stievenart, also known as Stève the Seal, completed three consecutive Catalina crossings from the island to Los Angeles, back and then back to Los Angeles again. After hitting his head on his supporting kayaker’s vessel just an hour into the swim, he thought that might be it, but pushed through. On his third and final leg, hundreds of dolphins came to swim alongside him. One backflipped behind him. The experience encouraged him to finish his record breaking journey. It wasn’t the first time dolphins assisted him. During a bout of sea sickness on a double Catalina Crossing, a dolphin and her calf brought him peace to carry on.

Swimmers used to need to write an essay to swim around the island of Manhattan. Argüelles remembers this was tougher to write than his application into Stanford University. Nowadays, while the logistics remain difficult, piloting underneath 20 bridges through the East, Harlem, and Hudson rivers, the barriers have improved: There’s no essay, just an application, and there are experienced pilots and swimming associations and nonprofits to support athletes.

While the idea of floating through waters surrounding 1.7 million residents might make even Cosmo Kramer blush, the juxtaposition is what makes this trial unique. Bonnie Tsui, author of Why We Swim, admits the waters’ cleanliness over the years might give one pause, “but that shift in perspective is so glorious, it’s so amazing.” It is a sense of putting oneself where you’re not normally, Tsui says, it’s like you’re a kid getting to throw yourself into the water and no one’s going to tell you that you can’t swim around. “It’s very elemental… there’s something satisfying about it in a basic way.”

Of the Triple Crown, Stievenart’s favorite swim is the Manhattan length. You’re like a tourist hearing the sounds of New York City. “There’s something special about the atmosphere in Manhattan,” Stievenart says.

No porpoises join swimmers on this leg, but Suzie Dods ran into a dead chicken and a grapefruit when she completed the swim, earning her Triple Crown status in 2015. That’s city life. On occasion, a whale can be spotted in the bay, says Stievenart.

Steven Munatones, referred to by Argüelles as the “Godfather of the Triple Crown” for his efforts in popularizing the challenge, recalls swimming the 20 bridges of New York City fondly. When Munatones swam it in 1984 the Clean Water Act was only 12 years old. The rivers were different then. He recalls taking a bus to his friend’s apartment in the city, hair still wet from the 7 hour 51 minute journey. One New Yorker said to him: “You stink like s–t.” “Yeah, I just swam around Manhattan,” Munatones replied. The bus rider looked at him again and said “You are so full of s–t!”

All these years later, Munatones laughs at the experience, saying he was just tired and wanted to take a shower. Paraphrasing Jacques-Yves Cousteau, he says about our vital waters: “If you love it, you protect it.” The more people swim, the more people will protect our marine environment, he believes. “So everybody head to the shores.”

Correction: An earlier version misspelled Trent Grimsey’s name.