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By Root 389 0

which looked just as it had on my last crossing. But the current was a lot stronger this time and our inverted S became much wider. The year before I had had to maintain my pace and increase my speed to cut across the currents. This time I had to crank everything up a couple of notches. I constantly wondered, Am I going to make it in time? I’m not sure why I wanted to put that kind of pressure on myself or why I felt the need to go back to swim the English Channel. Some people explained it by saying that swimmers get “Channel fever.” It’s as if the Channel lures swimmers back to Dover like a siren. It’s the place, the history, the friendships, the successes, and the heartbreaks. The Channel has a strange pull on swimmers, even if they’ve succeeded before. And some swimmers return to England year after year to pit themselves against the Channel again and again.

For me, I think it was that I needed another goal, something to focus my energy. I knew that one of my reasons for returning was to prove that I had not just been lucky on my first crossing. Some people had dismissed my previous swim by saying that I had had perfect conditions, though that wasn’t true. The currents had been changeable and very tough.

This year, no one could say I had it easy. By the middle of the night the wind had increased to ten knots and the chop on the sea surface to just before whitecaps. The tides were a lot stronger too. When we reached Cape Gris-Nez, the tide was so strong that for every stroke I was taking, the current was pushing me back four or five. For over an hour I fought a losing battle, with time slipping away and the lighthouse receding into the cliffs.

Brickell made many course changes, but nothing seemed to work. Finally he decided to turn south so we could cut across the current and hopefully find ourselves in a second current that would circle back and carry us toward the point. Brickell wasn’t sure it would work, and after we started, he was even less sure; we weren’t making progress. The crew—Mickey, my mother, and Reg Junior—cheered me on. Brickell made three or four more course changes, and finally we started moving forward. But then we hit another current, and it started to pull us out into the mid-Channel again. There was nothing more discouraging than almost touching shore, almost climbing out of the water, only to be dragged back toward mid-Channel.

Again Brickell made more course changes, and I swam with all I had. Finally, we broached the current, swung around, and fought our way in to shore. In total I swam thirty-three miles, three miles farther than the year before, and I broke Davis Hart’s world record with a time of nine hours and thirty-six minutes. It was a great moment, being able to repeat an English Channel success, and I felt a great sense of satisfaction. But after that I decided I had had enough of swimming the English Channel; I wanted to do something else.

8

Invitation to Egypt

Later that year I received, because of my world-record Channel swim, an invitation from the Egyptian government to join a group of long-distance swimmers for a race in the Nile River. When Fahmy Attallah heard about the invitation, he encouraged me to go, and to have David accompany me as my coach. Fahmy told us that in Egypt long-distance swimmers are more revered than NFL quarterbacks. Streets are named for them, and parades are conducted in their honor throughout the city of Cairo. He said we would have a wonderful experience, and he romantically described how beautiful Cairo would be, and how well we would be taken care of. He said that Egyptians were very gracious and generous people; they would welcome us into their homes and would take good care of us. Fahmy gave us the names of his brothers and a cousin who lived in Cairo, in case we needed any help with anything.

A few months later, during spring vacation in 1974, when Dave and I stepped off the United Arab Airlines plane onto the unlit tarmac at Cairo airport, submachine guns were trained on us by Egyptian army troops. The Yom Kippur War between Egypt and