The Berkoff Blastoff 34

An athlete changing a sport is a rare thing while there are many swimmers/ races that have reset the high-bar - to name only a few, Mary T Meagher's 200m butterfly WR in 1981 took 20 years to break; Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps of course.  Tracy Caulkins was the greatest multiple-stroke competitor of a generation and the marvellous Katie Ledecky still reigns supreme in the distance events.

But here I focus on Dave Berkoff, Harvard '89 (my graduation year and friends with sister Katie, also on the Harvard swim team). Physically unremarkable at 5'10" and 155lbs, his revolutionary backstroke start and turn dove underwater for 35-40m in a 50m pool using a wavelike dolphin kick and streamlined locked arms.  It was a novel thing and, Berkoff realised, faster than surface swimming.  

Using this technique Dave won NCAAs, US nationals and four Olympic medals and set backstroke WRs across his career.  Berkoff's races elicited loud uninterrupted cheers until he popped up to take a breath and stroke or two before the wall then back underwater. 

Today most every elite swimmer has strong "underwaters" regardless of the stroke.  Fittingly, Dave's daughter Katherine qualified for the Paris Olympics in the 100m backstroke.

Photo of Dave Berkoff from the collection of Carl-Johansson/ Olympedia (1987)

The Great Vladimir Salnikov 33

Soviet distance swimmer Vladimir Salnikov was the first person to swim the 1500m under 15 minutes which he did at the 1980 Moscow Olympics with a time of 15:58.27.  It was then the equivalent of the mythical four-minute mile or today's two-hour marathon.

I had the below poster of Salnikov pinned to the wall of my bedroom next to back-stroker John Nabor and Cheryl Tiegs.  According to Swimming World magazine, Salnikov trained like blood and nails which, in an era of more-distance-is-better, was something I could relate to.

Salnikov dominated the late '70s/ early '80s winning every race he swam (400, 800 and 1500m) accepting once against Californian Jeff Kostoff in 1981 in the USA-USSR "friendship" dual meet. During this time Salnikov bettered 12 world records yet never received broad recognition due to the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the Soviet Union staying away from LA in '84.

Today the 1500m world record is held by China's Sun Yang in 14:31.02 (highly likely doped) while there are six 16 year-olds who have gone under 15 minutes with Turkey's Kuzey Tuncelli finishing the distance in 14:41.90 at the Euro Junior Nationals last week Thursday (July 4).

My best 1500m time was 16:35 at 16 swum in Switzerland.

Vladimir Salnikov under 15 minutes, first time, July 22, 1980.

L'Equipe Suisse 1984 (32)

My junior year of HS (1983-84) was spent in Geneva training with Geneve Natation 1985.  To do so, following manoeuvres by the Berkeley Barracudas, my parents and the Swiss national swimming coach (Tony Ulrich), I found myself living with a Swiss family (strictly French speaking) on rue de l'ecole de medecine while Claude, on the counter-exchange, stayed with my family (which btw did not work out as Claude expected Baywatch and got Northern California).

During this time I attended College de Candolle with all my coursework in French, a language that became helpful later in my professional life at Astorg, a French investment firm in the Paris 8e.

The real motivation for the year was, of course, the swimming where I trained with Dano Hallsal who set a world record in the 50m freestyle in 1985; Etienne Dagon who won Switzerland's first Olympics swimming medal, a bronze in the 200m breaststroke; and Theophile and Francois David and Thierry Jacot who competed in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics.

From the right, Theo, Dano and Etienne (I do not know the fourth) at the 1983 Euro Championships.

Water Logged 31

 My training so far (NB I committed to the Channel on December 31, 2023) :

For comparison, as a kid thru college, I spent four hours a day in the pool typically hitting 14,000 daily yards across double workouts equalling, roughly, 360km (225 miles) a month (assuming Sundays off).

The below photo, maybe 1981, is pretty much how the weekends went - my Dad, in the blue hat, examining a time-sheet or doing some legal work.  Kirk, the barracudas' coach, passing the day between events.

Katie 30

Ours was a swimming family which meant up well before dawn and training in well-lit pools after dark, rain or shine.  

My dad enjoyed the morning company since he was on his way to work anyway.  Katie, on the other hand, a night owl to this day who persevered on limited sleep through high school and four-years swimming at Harvard (I swam two seasons for Brown).  On the car ride to morning practice we counted every stop-light preying for red.

Surprisingly I do not have many age-group photos from the pool or at swimming meets, where we spent most of our weekends, commuting with other swimmers, Moe volunteering as a timer.

Here is Katie, my support team in most things.

The Summer of '86 (29)

The summer following college freshman year I swam with the local club, Little Rhody (eg Rhode Island) at the Brown Aquatics Center, a 50m by 25yd pool too shallow at the competition-end with an odd timber-roof that one could climb on to when one was drunk.  Not that one would do so.

Sidebar: unsurprisingly the roof became structurally unsound and torn down in 2010 to make way for one of the best pools I know - the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center, which opened at Brown in 2012 and is big, deep and fast (racers feel it).

So the summer of 1986 I trained from 6-8am then painted houses until dusk then washed dishes at the upscale restaurant Cafe At Brooks (in the dicey Providence neighbourhood of Fox Point) which was fun since the head chef, Joe, was a RISD graduate with no culinary training.  He would look at me and say, straight faced, "this one is coming back."

The waitresses were pretty and we were allowed an after-shift drink at the long brass bar after closing hours.  Sometimes Providence mayor Buddy Cianci would drop by to tell stories about Federal Hill or the mob.

For some reason known only to a 19 year old I wanted bleached hair so, after morning practice, I added a lemon juice and salt mixture to my scalp. Below.

Here I am at summer's end painting the stairs of my parent's Berkeley house (Moe informed that my fees to be offset by the rent, a never ending joke between us (of course I paid no rent).

Cor Tenebrarum 28

Everyone, or at least most, has their moment of doubt and I feel nothing less for the Channel. 14 hours is a lot of time to spend in a physical activity dreaming whatever comes to mind and struggling undoubtedly with fatigue and doubt.  Once I start, there is no turning back accepting for the tides or hypothermia.  The rest is mental.

A fair question, then, is why ? A considered answer, why not ? The English Channel is outside my comfort zone at a time (age 57) when the stuff that worries me most is mostly under my control or, at least, I have experienced it before.  We will all be 73 one day or already, Ottis Thaning's age when he set the mark for oldest crosser.  My body is not the limiting factor (says he). 

I have made new friends whose similar journey is inspiring.  The goal itself has given meaning beyond the Channel itself.

But, but, but the Channel - I fear the wide-open space and not seeing the shoreline. The fading-out of sea-light to black beneath my gaze.  My imagination.  Starting in darkness.  The true time of a day.

Level Crossing 27

The English Channel is the busiest sea route in the world and the Dover Straight, where I will cross, is the busiest shipping lane on the planet. More than 500 ships pass through the Channel daily including the biggest super tankers longer than the Empire State Building is tall.

To accomplish this, the coast guard uses radar surveillance and operates an IMO adapted Traffic Separation Scheme (eg two traffic lanes for inward and outward bound traffic; rules internationally agreed).  Channel VTS is jointly operated jointly by the Dover Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre and CROSS Gris Nez in France.  In short, the VP II will be visible.

Ultimately my pilot is responsible for ensuring a safety zone of several 100m minimum at all times.  There will likely be moments when the large ships change course to avoid our path (tankers travel at 17-24 knots).

As I am now a month from the Channel I will swim one more long week of 40km then Taper down to 20km the week before D Day.

The oil tanker Hamilton Spirit, here in the Channel, is 274m by 48m with GT of 81,384 tons and DTW of 158,769 (image by TeeKay).

Paul 26

The Channel swimmers are now going with the water temperature an accommodating 14-15C at the Dover Strait and a nice heat wave to keep things calm for the while.

Swim-camp pal Paul, age 58, was to attempt the 26-mile Moloka'i Channel (meaning "the state of bones") connecting O'ahu and Moloka'i in Hawaii this week as part of the Oceans 7 only the winds uncooperative so instead he is dong the Bristol Channel as a training run - 16 miles point-to-point and work the next day. 

Notably the Bristol Channel has one of the largest tidal ranges in the world, up to 18 meters (43 feet) and today's tide is on the extreme end.

Pictured, Paul at the half-way point of the Bristol Channel (photo from his brother).

The Aquabears 25

The summer of my sophomore year of HS I made the jump from the Barracudas to the Walnut Creek Aquabears in the suburban valley. The squad had c 300 kids covering the age-groups to the older elites who were broken into groups, mine distance, which was gnarly but also respected.  I spent the day between practice watching MTV with my new best friends whose silver hair was as bleach-blonde as my own. I fit in perfectly.

The Aquabears' success was driven, in large part, by head coach Mike Troy who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated for winning two gold medals in the '60 Rome Olympics and then a Navy Seal - in short, hard corps. 

Mike sat in a fold-out deck chair under a sun umbrella with his clipboard in the baking heat, legs crossed and flip flops dangling from his toes, asserting himself across the 50m pool.  He was aware of every swimmer's repeats or at least (more importantly) we thought so. 

Mike had his favourites and, on occasion,  he would bark out to one of us that we could have "the geek" (his beautifully preserved 1960s Karmann Ghia automobile) for the weekend if a specific time was held during a set. We went nuts.

It was a fast squad with bronzed HS girls and high standards.  A combo so compelling that I qualified for my first Junior Nationals in the 1500m at 15.

Mike Troy at Heather Farms Aquatic Complex in Walnut Creek in 1983.

Muscle Mass 24

Every day I mark, with a thick black marker, my work.  An "X" indicates a rest-day, so March had only two, a month I swam 125.6 kilometres.

Since January I have gained six-kilograms and, when I mentioned it to Coach he asked if my trousers still fit - they do - so it is mostly upper-body muscle.  To put it another way, 1kg equals 900ml of muscle mass (1,100ml of fat) so I have added 5.4 litres of muscle volume in six months.  The question, then, really, are my shirts, which still fit. 

Viking Princess II (23)

The Viking Princess II, piloted by Reg and Ray Brickell, will take me across the Channel.  Reg and Ray are a father-son team who I have yet to meet while their reputation precedes them - they piloted both the men and women Channel record holders, an accomplishment of knowing the tides as much, or more so, than the swimmer's ability. 

The Brickells are otherwise all-year fishermen excepting the two-months of the year when guys like me are willing to pay more than the daily catch.

In total, there are seven English Channel Association sanctioned boats chaperoning maybe 60 swimmers (including relays) in a season (NB the only crossing direction allowed is from England to France). 

The VP II is a category 2 (NB "2"=60-miles from port or safe harbour) commercial catamaran that can hold a crew of 12.  Initially I thought it would be nice to have supporters on the VP II but coach said "no way" as the likely outcome is PTSD from 20 hours of seasickness.

Here is the VP II which may be dragging a swimmer across the Channel.

More Training 22

Since committing to the Channel on December 31, and following a two month ramp-up, I now swim 30-35km a week, six or even seven-days a week, often twice a day, and finding a pool when travelling has become a thing.  The laps are now my quiet place.

A staple of the training is a Monday morning set of 8x400m freestyle intervals on a 6:15 clock with a serious crew at the Richmond pool (NB three completed an Ironman on Saturday each finishing top-10 in their age group after the 2.4 mile swim with over 2,000 competitors). 

In January, I was unable to make the 400 repeats. By February I finished but under extreme duress. By March I was averaging maybe 10-seconds recovery between intervals and now I can hold 5:45s.

Ron here usually leads the morning sets while I sit at the caboose of the five to seven of us doing the 400s set.  

As a wise man once told me, "you always want to feel like you are on an upward slope" which swimming at 56 has certainly been.

Shepperton Lake 21

Several have commented on what a sweetheart Matt Biondi was at Cal.  I recall, on one ocassion, an over-sized dude on a two-wheel mini-bicycle cruising down busy Bancroft Way, knees wide-out, back hunched over and feet barely on the pedals and spinning furiously. Of course Matt on his way to swim practice.  Legend.

Today's anticipated nine-mile race in Dover Harbour cancelled, last minute, by the Harbour Master: with winds reaching gale force by 10:00am leading to high swell with the harbour there runs the risk of the safety kayaks not being satisfactory craft for assisting persons in the water. 

I aim for better weather from July 26 to August 5 (NB the pilot has the final call on suitable conditions. If No, then it is next year).

Instead of Dover I swim at Shepperton Lake for about three-hours or 10km - 12 loops around and round and round.

Photo of Eitan and me at the lake last summer.

Heroes 20

Continuing on the positive influencers, Sam, Ray and Maggi, on the Berkeley Barracudas, played an outsized role in my early theatrical life.  

Sam was five-years older so we did not cross on the HS team when he set the BHS record in the 50 yard freestyle (21.04) which remained for over 20 years. Sam was tall, handsome and Larger Than Life, dating the older sister of a friend, and treated me like an insider even while I was a non-classmen, which felt pretty cool as a 95lb eighth-grader without much to say to girls (or anyone).

Ray, a ferocious breast stroker, saved the BHS swim team when the program was to be cut for budgetary reasons. Ray testified at a city commission that swimming kept him from the streets and had profoundly impacted his life. Without Ray, no BHS aquatics. He is now an artist and I have one of his paintings in our house.

Then there was Maggi, a backstroker, and we all - and I mean all of us - had a crush on her.  Coach asked her to marry him but that is for another story (and era).  Maggi, like Biondi, was a world class water polo player and a member of the US National team for ten-years. She competed in four World Championships, was named USA Water Polo Female Athlete of the Year in 1992, and inducted in the US Water Polo Hall of Fame in 2004. Maggi would have gone to the Olympics were women's water polo a sport in the 1980s and 90s (it became one in Sydney in 2000). Maggi contends for the greatest athlete I have known in my lifetime. She is now a professor at UC Berkeley.

Sam, Ray and Maggi live in Berkeley. Phot of Maggi from the Berkeley High Year Book.

The Good And The Great 19

From an early life-time in the pool I have had the fortune of swimming with/ against/ observing some of the very best in the sport including a GOAT (at the time), American and NCAA record holders, World record holders, Olympic medalists, NCAA champions, a runner-up NCAA championship team (Cal) and the Swiss national team during an Olympics year. All of it before I went to university.

Starting with the easiest : Matt Biondi, a tall muscular kid from Moraga (over the hill from Berkeley) dropped, full-prime, into my sophomore year of high school when, in 1983, he stepped onto a racing block at Cal's new Spieker pool for the 50-yard freestyle final at the Northcoast Swimming Championships. With the sun blazing and the stands screaming "Bee-On-Dee", Matt went 20.40 - a national high school record. 

From HS Matt went to the summer Olympics in '84, '88 and '92 winning eleven medals including eight gold. He set world records in the 50m and 100m freestyle. At Cal for college, he swam and played water polo with NCAA titles and American sprint records from the get-go.

I trained with Cal my senior year HS so Matt and I were in the changing room though, really, he paid me no mind.  It was hard, for me, not to be star-struck especially when seeing him hit NCAA automatic qualifying times (top 16 from the prior year) in mid-week practice.

Also on the Cal team was John Mykkanen, a Cal freshman and with me in the distance lane.  Mykkanen won a silver medal in the 400m freestyle in the LA '84 Olympics; he also set a US high school record in 1983 in the 500yd freestyle at Socals with a 4:19 only it was second-place to Jeff Kostoff who went 4:16.  John had an awkward technique with one arm crossing his head on the catch-up forcing an extraordinary body contortion mid-stroke. He was also overweight which is difficult when swimming so much. But, hey, it worked for him. His daughter Courtney went to Cal and swam at the 2012 Olympic trials.

Matt Biondi at the '88 Seoul Olympics. Photo from the Cal Top 100 Athletes website (Biondi number 10).

The Rhine 18

Visiting childhood friend David in Basel I swim what's there, or at least nearby, which is the Rhine.

There has been considerable rain in the Alps and the water level of the river is about 15 feet higher than normal and the current is easily 8 knots.  So David and I check it out and thumb it 'safe,' as long as I swim close to the river's edge. 

Next morning I skinny down the steep granite steps, flippers in hand, and think to myself, "this is rather stupid," and edge into a hard current and start wailing away as hard as I can, heading down stream - wrong way - thinking: this could actually be dangerous.

Eventually I find purchase and work my way back, against the current, averaging maybe 20 meters every 2 or 3 minutes until I find an inlet that allows me to hold my place.  Long and narrow commercial boats go by. Pedestrians look down and watch me like I'm crazy.  I swim for 80 minutes. 

As my coach Tim says, "you swim what's in front of you" which is true for many things beyond the Rhine.

Random selfie at David's house nicely suggesting the "why" of what I am doing.

Some Geography 17

The English Channel ("La Manche" in France) is an 'arm' of the Atlantic Ocean that links the southern part of the North Sea by the Dover Strait at its northeastern end.  It was formed by a complex structural down-folding from c 40 million years ago though geologists debate that its downward tendencies began as early as 270m years ago from off-and-on movements of the glaciers, rock and ice.

Its deepest point, Hurd's Deep, is 180 meters below sea level (the average depth is 63meters). The Chunnel, for context, is sunk to 75meters. By contrast, the Channel is 560km long and 240km wide at its extremes; the narrowist, where I will swim, is 35km from Dover to Calais.

The surface area measures 29,000 square-miles with water volumes of approximately 2,200 cubic miles so, basically, the Channel is a giant funnel that boosts the tidal range (the difference from high to low water) from less than a mater at sea level to over six meters.

Rusty checks out the Dover Cliffs, below. It is the kind of day I am hoping for.

Station 62304 (16)

Station 62304, also known as the Sandettie Lightship, provides a general sense on how at least one micro-climate is developing in the middle of the Channel.

Were I to swim today, the wind-speed would be c 16-knots in a northerly direction (10 degrees true) with wave heights of around four-feet and an average period in-tween of six-seconds. Note that a wave is measure from the backside from the crest to sea level; the face can be up to 2X bigger when facing front, as any surfer knows.

Today, at the buoy, the measured water temperature is 12C. Visibility five-miles. The readings, while normal for now, are not ideal for swimming and can readily cause hypothermia or sea sickness.

The official season for a crossing really begins in July, when water temperatures are around 14C (and climbing) and the weather calmer.  June may be a few degrees colder but there is less competition for a pilot.

On The "Now" 15

And so why now ?

I lost my hard-earned swimmer's identity sophomore year of college when I quit the varsity team, a group I found to be a real bummer, to join the cross country and track teams - the best Brown has produced for the distances.

My swimming interest rekindled c ten years ago when a group of childhood friends introduced me to the SF Bay, whose cold water in wintertime a novel and eccentric experience. Yet there I was, re-united with some awesome dudes, yelping with the best of them when the water temperatures below 12C. Often enough, ADHD'd from jet lag, I was in the pitch-black bay watching the sunrise across the SF skyline. Or, equally good, in the bay within one hour of landing at SFO.

From there, I began pool training in London but never more than a couple thousand meters since .. boring. Also lap swimmers hated on me (tumble turns !) and the public pools are, well, public, so there was not motivation to routinise a training program, no matter the health mind benefits.

The spur was Diana Nyad's attempts - and success - swimming from Havana to Key was (105 miles, 52 hours) at 64 (Yes, I watched the film). Nyad is from California. She had a purpose. If Nyad, why not the Channel ?

I signed up with the English Channel Associations and then Red Top Swim whose Head Coach, Tim Denyer, a serious guy. the Viking Princess II had a slot in July (the wait time can be two-years) and I was good to go.

At the Dolphin Club, SF Bay, with Ken, a fellow deep swim enthusiast :