MESA, Arizona. – On an 80-degree morning, a group of world-class swimmers in their Speedos and swim caps stood on a pebble beach east of Phoenix.
They gathered on the shore of Saguaro Lake on April 25 to compete in the SCAR Swim, a four-day, 40-mile open-water race across four lakes along the Salt River in Central Arizona: the Saguaro, Canyon, Apache and Roosevelt.
Kent Nicholas, the organizer of the event, does not let just anyone participate. This year’s swimmers were between their 20s and their late 60s and all had resumes. The field included men and women who had successfully swum across the English Channel, Lake Tahoe, Monterey Bay, the Catalina Channel and around Manhattan.
The swimmers were nervous as they were divided into three suits and sailed on pontoon boats past a sign that warned, “Spillway doors may open without notice.” When that happened a year ago, athletes were forced to a sandbar to avoid being sucked back. This year the conditions were perfect.
Through a megaphone, Nicholas, 56, ordered everyone off the boats and into the 55-degree water. Breathless from the shock of the cold, the participants swam to a series of orange buoys in the shadow of a concrete dam.
While the world’s major broadcasting associations ban wetsuits, and most ban smart watches, Nicholas allows both. But a purist ethic is swimming deep in open water, and there was no neoprene in the SCAR Swim field. With one hand on the buoy line and the other in the air, Nicholas released the swimmers for a 15.5-mile swim to a dam on the other side of the lake.
When they were done, they went back to Mesa, Nicholas’ hometown, and stayed the night. The next day, the swimmers drove an hour to Canyon Lake for a 9-mile swim, followed immediately by a two-hour drive past ghost towns and copper mines to Apache Lake for a 17-mile dive that began at dawn on Day 3. The Final Dive took place the next night, a 10.2 mile swim on Roosevelt Lake.
For perspective, keep in mind that the English Channel, the most famous open water swimming location, is 21 miles.
With its marathon distance (about 40 miles), hair-raising swims (the starting temperature on Apache was about 53 degrees Fahrenheit), dramatic scenery, and road trip interludes, the event was honored as the World of Open Water Swimming Association’s Event of the Year in 2022 .
It’s a gathering of kindred spirits and a snapshot of Arizona that even locals may not have seen. The first three lakes still feel like the river they once were. Swimmers made their way through the languid, lime green waters that snaked between towering red rock cliffs some 500 feet high and past huge mesas and eroding mounds with roots of mesquite and saguaro. The desert was green and blooming. Turkey vultures and blue herons soared overhead. Families of bighorn sheep gathered on rocky ledges.
Nicholas, an Arizona-born criminal defense attorney, first imagined the event while training in Saguaro Lake for his own crossing of the Catalina Channel in 2011. The following year, seven swimmers joined him in the first official SCAR Swim. This year, 58 swimmers from 16 states and six countries arrived. Thirty-eight of them were women.
That’s not an anomaly. Since then, American Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to be successful swimming across the English Channel in 1926shattering the existing Channel record by nearly two hours, women have remained at the top of the sport.
According to Julian Critchlow, a marathon swimmer and data analyst who has analyzed every successful English Channel crossing since 1875, the average female finisher is about 11 minutes faster than the average male. Women also have a better success rate. No one has crossed the Channel more times than Chloe McCardel, a record she claimed from Alison Streeter in 2021.
“It’s interesting because when you think about ultra running or triathlon or long bike rides, men start moving faster,” says Catherine Breed, who swam at the University of California, Berkeley, and once held the record for the fastest swim across Lake Tahoe. “But I do think that women have more mental resilience and perseverance. We let the hard stuff flow quickly and keep going.
Last year, 30-year-old Breed became the first person to swim from the Golden Gate Bridge to Half Moon Bay in Northern California.
Last month, she finished second on the Saguaro Lake stage behind Michael Rice, whose barrel chest and powerful arms hinted at his years of butterfly swimming at the University of Florida and Florida State, as well as some genetics. In 1999, his mother, Gail, swam the English Channel in 8 hours and 12 minutes, one of the fastest times ever.
Rice was introduced to the SCAR Swim in 2021 after meeting Sarah Thomas, the first female swimmer to swim the English Channel four times in a row, at a spring-fed pond favored by suburban Denver swimmers. Thomas, who works as a recruiter, has an eye for talent. She talked to him and trained with him. In the 2021 event he placed first overall and she won the women’s draw to finish second overall.
2022 overall winner Steven Munatones, 60, finished Saguaro in third place last month, just over 11 minutes behind Rice. Munatones has dedicated his life to the sport. In the 1970s, he was a teenage reporter for international swimming publications. In the 1990s, he won two U.S. Masters national championships in the open water, and was among a small international cohort that helped get open water swimming to the 2008 Olympics, an effort that had continued since the 1980s.
In 2016, Munatones suffered a heart attack at home in Huntington Beach, California. His teenage son performed CPR until help arrived. After years of recovery, he started dreaming of swimming in open water again during the pandemic. He hadn’t swam more than a few thousand meters since 1994, but last year he signed up for SCAR. He trained hard, perhaps harder than ever, and surprised himself and everyone else with the win.
“When you come back from something like me,” said Munatones, “it’s all a bonus. At the end of each day I feel like, wow, I got another one in.
Although the sun was warm, the water was lively in Canyon Lake, especially for the first mile or so. A few people dropped out, but most persevered. They drank electrolytes every 30 to 60 minutes to stay hydrated, and when their fuel tanks were running low, they chewed red vines, black licorice, dates, or chocolates; aspirated energy gels or fruit purees; or defeated shots of maple syrup. Swimmers filled their own feed bags, managed by their kayakers, who paddled on the dominant breathing side of the swimmers and charted the most efficient line possible.
This year’s kayakers could be next year’s swimmers, and vice versa, because open water swimming is all about generosity and reciprocity. Even Thomas was kayaking instead of swimming this year.
The fastest athletes completed Saguaro and Canyon Lakes in less than three hours each. Apache took them about five hours. The slowest swimmers took more than five hours for the shorter swims and nine and a half hours for Apache.
Breed keeps her mind focused on form and posture. Munatones makes his runaway. Rice correlates the internal chaos with love and dedicates different parts of the race to people he cares about.
Nicholas greeted his swimmers at the finish line in what he called his “finishing boat,” a pontoon cruiser outfitted with a huge cooler of craft beer and drinkable wine and a much smaller one for athletic drinks and water. Rice and Breed cracked beer and waited for the rest of the field to trickle in. Some finishers were lean and shivering and others were built like tanks, with many variations in between.
“That’s what I love about this sport,” Breed said. “Every body — every physical type — is welcome, and you see people with different body types excel at it.”
As athletes “hydrated” and soaked up the sun, training tips were shared and future events mapped out. No one cheered louder at the finish line than Rice. He got up, clapped and screamed. Down twice, two grueling swims to go.
“I have to encourage them,” he said. “They’re all great people, it’s a tough event and I want everyone to reach their goals.”