Gruelling, on a Summer Afternoon

Gruel l inG, on a Summer a f t er noon Jerry Kobalen K o july/august 2002 t’s Wednesday morning, just past eight, and a small crowd is gathered at the marina in the town of Roberval, Quebec. A few locals I are in the water, swimming their daily mile. On the docks, a middle- aged man limbers up with arm swings while puffing on a cigarette. He strips into his swimsuit, sucks in his gut and dives off the pier into iron- stained Lac St-Jean. His form’s not bad for an amateur. The serious swimmers—those who’ve come from around the world for the 2001 edition of the Traversée Internationale du Lac St-Jean—are easy to spot. They’re the ones never without a jumbo squirt bottle in one hand; as if they don’t spend enough time around water, marathon swimmers are constantly rehydrating themselves. After a light workout in the marina, they hang around the lakeside bleachers and chat. Professional marathon swimming is a small world, and everyone knows everyone. While it takes weeks to recover from running 26 miles, swimmers race almost that distance every weekend during the busy core of the marathon season. Last week, most were either at Lake Memphremagog, on the Quebec-Vermont border, or at the world championships in Japan. Now they are eagerly discussing a rumour that the 2004 Olympics in Athens · 214 · WayOutInterior.indd 214 12/20/05 10:36:14 AM · 215 · will include a 10-kilometre swim, a move that could up the profile of this otherwise obscure sport. They also talk about the water. It’s been windy lately, and even in the protected marina, the water temperature is a breath-sucking 17°c. Most of the swimmers keep their concerns to themselves, but Fabio Fusi, a well- sculpted Italian, is noticeably spooked. These days, relative newcomers such as Fusi are weaned on warm-water events, like those in Argentina and Egypt. They no longer expect cold to be a factor. Among the major marathon-swim races, only Lac St-Jean has the potential to be truly dan- gerous. In three days, the 25 swimmers will slip into its chill waters and test the resolve of both body and will. Ten competitors will be defeated by the lake in their attempt to cross it. One of them will nearly die. lac st-jean sits 200 kilometres north of Quebec City, on the edge of the boreal forest. Roberval, a pulp-and-paper town at its southern end, bursts into provincial prominence on the last weekend of every July, when it hosts the Traversée. Thanks to Lac St-Jean, marathon swimming is a big deal in Quebec, and some years the race winner even graces the front page of the Montreal papers. The Traversée began in 1955, a year after Marilyn Bell electrified the nation with her swim across Lake Ontario. Until then, swimmers in Quebec had been scared to attempt Lac St-Jean. “She showed it was pos- sible,” says Jacques Amyot. A barrel-chested 78-year-old who still swims three times a week, Amyot was swimming a relay in front of the Cana- dian National Exhibition on the same day that Bell did her historic crossing. The following year, he and six other Quebec swimmers attempted the inaugural 26-kilometre Traversée. Waves and cold water thwarted the others, but Amyot prevailed in a time of eleven and a half hours. Amyot’s improbable feat made him a local celebrity and established Lac St-Jean as a world-class marathon swim. It also inspired a host of other prestigious Quebec races, including a 24-hour relay at La Tuque, a 40-kilometre crossing of Lake Memphremagog, and a swim in the frigid sea at Paspébiac, off the Gaspé Peninsula. Except for Memphremagog, all these events eventually folded. Marathon swimming, to put it kindly, is WayOutInterior.indd 215 12/20/05 10:36:15 AM Gruelling, on a Summer Afternoon not a telegenic sport. Sponsors are largely local, and the organizations depend on the continued goodwill of volunteers. In the mid-1990s, even the Traversée came close to bankruptcy. The race always ends at the marina in Roberval, but the course has changed several times over the years. In the late 1980s, for example, it was a gruelling 64-kilometre double crossing. Competitors began at 10 pm the previous evening, with light sticks in their swimsuits so that their boats could keep track of them in the darkness. “It was hard on the guides as well as the swimmers,” says Denis Lebel, mayor of Roberval and a long-time Traversée aficionado. Currently the route is 32 kilometres long, and begins four kilometres up the Péribonka River, on the north side of the lake. Unlike the English Channel or Lake Ontario, Lac St-Jean does not have a history of dramatic solo swims—it’s always been about the Traversée. Nevertheless, in 1996, Jeffrey Blufford, an American in his late thirties with no history of marathon swimming, came to Lac St-Jean and enlisted the help of one of the experienced Traversée guides. On the same day as the race, he set out to swim a slightly different route across the lake with the guide and the guide’s son. It was a stormy day, according to one observer, “with waves like white sheep” that rocked the solitary little boat. Near the end of the crossing, an exhausted Blufford grabbed the gunwale of the boat and capsized it. The guide managed to swim to an island, but Blufford drowned, along with the guide’s son. the pre-race favourite for 2001 is Stéphane Lecat. Each year, marathon swimming crowns an overall champion, much like Formula One racing, based on the accumulated results of about 10 races. Lecat has reigned for the last two years; the aloof, goateed Frenchman is also the two-time defending champion at Lac St-Jean. His winnings, combined with sponsorship in his homeland, give him an annual income that fel- low swimmers estimate at around $70,000 U.S. Most of the others at the race swim to break even or for the experience of travelling the world after their careers as pool racers. Lecat’s main competition is Petar Stoychev, a dour Bulgarian who broke Lake Memphremagog’s record last week. (Lecat was racing in WayOutInterior.indd 216 12/20/05 10:36:15 AM · 217 · Japan.) Among his peers, Stoychev is about as popular as cheerless Czech star Ivan Lendl was on the 1980s tennis circuit. Bulgaria’s Alice-in-Won- derland economy makes marathon swimming’s modest prize funds real money for him, although it’s rumoured he has to turn 80 per cent of his winnings over to his coach, an even more dour figure with the bedside manner of a Soviet-era figure-skating czar. Stoychev says that he swims in order to own nice clothes, cool sunglasses and a Mercedes. When asked if he ever plans to swim the English Channel, he looks puzzled: “What for?” His good finishing kick—he swam for Bulgaria in the 400 and 1,500 metres at the Sydney Olympics—means that if he can keep up with Lecat in the early going, he might be able to out sprint him at the end. Gabriel Chaillou of Argentina and Stéphane Gomez of France have beaten both frontrunners before and are considered potential spoilers. Rookie Tim Cowan is the lone Canadian male at the Traversée. A 23- year-old 1,500-metre pool specialist from Calgary who comes just shy of national team standards, Cowan heard of these marathons through a friend. Every year, such Olympians manqués make up a small but consis- tent percentage of the field. With 10- and 25-kilometre races now part of the world championships and marathon swimming threatening to become an Olympic sport, the longer distances offer a last chance for these athletes to fulfill a lifelong dream of representing their countries. Lac St-Jean is a step along that path. The women’s field is dominated by Dutch super-swimmer Edith van Dijk. Her one rival in the speed department, the slender German law student Britta Kamrau, hasn’t beaten her in two years. Van Dijk is so far ahead of her competition that she usually swims with the lead men’s pack. Although she typically finishes around seventh overall, she’s beaten most of the men at least once. “In marathon swimming, it seems to be okay if a girl beats you,” admits Tim Cowan. “That never happens in a pool.” (Not everyone is so gracious: After van Dijk edged out Stoychev at a race in Argentina, he didn’t speak to her for a week.) The four Canadian women are all from Quebec. Here, swimmers have grown up with the mystique of Lac St-Jean and tend to regard it as WayOutInterior.indd 217 12/20/05 10:36:16 AM Gruelling, on a Summer Afternoon an end in itself rather than as a backdoor chance to represent their coun- try. Three of the women are veterans, while 19-year-old Melissa Doyle from Aylmer, near Ottawa, was offered a spot after a last-minute cancel- lation, thanks to her strong showing at Lake Memphremagog. When she passed the 32-kilometre mark at this longer but less-storied race, her first thought was, “Now I can do Lac St-Jean.” She’s thrilled and a little scared to be part of the grand event. the traversée is the pièce de résistance of Roberval’s week-long summer festival.

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