The resiliency of open water swimmers has been admired for well over a century, before Katie Pumphrey dove in the water. After Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim across the English Channel in 1926, she returned home to the United States to a hero’s welcome. The questions began immediately as to what she would conquer next.
Story by Kevin Majoros
The following year Ederle was offered a spot in the Wrigley Ocean Marathon hosted by chewing gum and sports magnate, William Wrigley Jr. She would decline the offer but the race would go on to become the first documented crossing of the Catalina Channel.
One of the 14 women in the race was Charlotte Schoemmell who had completed the swim around Manhattan in 1926. She was an accomplished swimmer but was more famous for always requesting to swim naked like her male counterparts. Of the 102 swimmers entered that day in 1927 in Catalina, only Canadian teenager George Young would finish.
As of 1982, those three courses, the English Channel, the Catalina Channel and the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim make up the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming. Through 2017, only 151 swimmers have achieved the Triple Crown.
In 2015, Katie Pumphrey completed the English Channel crossing in her first attempt. Just recently, on June 26, she finished the Manhattan circumnavigation. Those who follow the sport would immediately ask what her plans are for Catalina.
“The natural progression is for people to ask what is next,” says Pumphrey. “I don’t look at my swims as checking off a list; I look at them as part of my journey and part of the moments of my life.”
That journey includes what lies after each open water accomplishment. With so many people romanticizing the experience, there is little talk about what open water swimmers are feeling when the swim is completed.
“While I am swimming I keep my emotional meter at neutral because there are so many variables out on the open water. When you retell the experience, it’s all the good stuff even though you are also reliving the dark moments in your head,” Pumphrey says. “I want to look back at the impact and what the swim did to change or shape me. What I learned about myself and what I learned about my team.”
Pumphrey’s journey to the open water began in Frederick, Maryland where she was an active athlete in cross country, lacrosse, swimming and track & field. She left sports behind while she attended Maryland Institute College of Art to study painting.
After graduating in 2009, she began teaching swim lessons in Baltimore which led to her signing up for the 4.4-mile Chesapeake Bay Swim in 2010. At that point, she had no knowledge of currents, water temperatures or navigating other swimmers. Despite the challenges she faced that day, she knew she would be continuing to more open water swims.
The next three years Pumphrey would take on the Chesapeake Bay Swim followed by the Potomac River 7.5 Mile Swim. The longer swim gave her experience with establishing a feeding schedule and the atmosphere of working with a team. In the middle of her third Potomac Swim, she realized that she wanted to go a step further.
“I wasn’t liking the crash and burn feeling after my season-ending swims every summer,” says Pumphrey. “I didn’t want the next step; I wanted to take multiple steps. When I finished the Potomac Swim in 2013, I knew I would start researching the English Channel.”
She had begun coaching other swimmers by that time and creating workouts for them was leading to better workouts for herself. She quietly began the research on training for the distance, swimming in the dark, feeding schedules, the necessary weight gain and everything else related to the channel crossing.
There would be a double crossing of the Potomac with a hired boat, a swim across the Long Island Sound, along with her English Channel qualified swim in Deep Creek Lake. Her training was ramped up to 60,000 meters a week with cross-training in yoga, running and dryland.
With her team in place – her fiancé Joe, her best friend Krista, her father Jack and her pilot Fred – she launched herself into the darkness in the waters off Shakespeare Beach in England. After many hours of struggling with vomiting, jelly fish stings and kelp pockets, she was spurred on by the horizon line and the support of her team. She would arrive at Wissant Beach in France in 14 hours and 19 minutes.
“There were a lot of things to think about after that swim; the sweet moments with my team on the boat, the respect I have for that body of water and yes, there were thoughts of the dark moments,” says Pumphrey smiling. “The funny moment was when I emerged on the beach and curious French tourists rushed over to try and figure out where I had come from.”
Pumphrey taps into her experiences in the water to paint and says that all her work is movement related. She paints hoping that a viewer will stand there a little longer to experience what she has created.
“Investigating the primal instinct to move and to be competitive, my work examines themes of confrontation, reflex, territory, and interaction. Through the turbulent marks on paper and canvas, I am exploring heavy, weighted mass, stillness and aggressive movement, as well as the tension in silence and the chaos in volume. My work considers pushing the body to and beyond its limits, its reactions from threats, and the emotions that drive us to compete.”
Pumphrey’s recent conquest of the Manhattan Island Swim, aka 20 Bridges, was preceded by a 12.5-mile swim around Key West. While Manhattan isn’t really a race, she found herself still wanting to ‘pick off’ swimmers over the 28.5-mile course.
“My swims this year were a big reminder that I love the open water and I love working with a team,” Pumphrey says. “I love that the water is more powerful than I am and that you are constantly reacting to your environment.”
The natural progression question remains. Will Pumphrey set her sights on the Catalina Channel?
“I want to continue to be an open water swimmer. I don’t want it to just be something that I have done,” says Pumphrey. “I am thinking that someday, I will return to the English Channel. As for Catalina and the Triple Crown, I didn’t set out for it, but being part of that community would be awesome.”
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