Taiwanese swimmer Hsu Wen-erh on Monday finished her solo swim around Manhattan Island to become the first Taiwanese and only the 334th person to finish the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming, after abandoning her first attempt in New York on Sunday.
“Who says, I’ll come back couldn’t means the next day?” she wrote on Facebook on Monday, after returning to the water to complete New York’s 48.5km 20 Bridges Swim, the final leg of her Triple Crown campaign.
Trailed by a kayak flying Taiwan’s national flag, Hsu went on to finish the brutal swim in 9 hours, 5 minutes, to capture her crown, which she wore over a knitted beanie while draped in the national flag during an interview with the Central News Agency posted on YouTube.
Photo courtesy of Hsu Wen-erh via CNA
On July 19, she became the first Taiwanese to swim the 33km English Channel, finishing in 12 hours, 17 minutes, before on Aug. 27 crossing the 32.5km Catalina Channel in 13 hours, 21 minutes, which with the 20 Bridges Swim make up the Triple Crown.
On Sunday, she wrote on Facebook that she had to abandon her first attempt in New York due to a strong current in the first 45 minutes of in the water, causing her to miss the tide she needed to keep going.
“It was the toughest swim I’ve ever done,” the 30-year-old wrote. “All the way against the current. I kept doing my best until the tide pushed us backwards.”
“It’s just not my day today. Sometimes you have no choice when Mother Nature is not in a good mood,” she added.
Tracking data from New York Open Water, which organizes the 20 Bridges Swim, showed that Hsu swam 14.07km in 3 hours, 50 minutes in her first attempt, after starting near Battery Park’s Pier A.
From there, she rounded the tip of Manhattan before making her way up the East River past the north end of Roosevelt Island, where she faced a strong tidal current pushing against her.
“This is part of open water swimming. There are many factors that can’t be controlled,” Hsu said after Sunday’s event.
“That’s the power of nature. To complete these challenges, you need things to align just right,” she said. “But I’ll be back [to try again] very soon.”
By soon, she meant the next day, when despite her exhaustion from the first try, she got back in the water.
“Yesterday was a lesson, not a failure. Keep the lesson in your mind, but don’t let the failure get into your head,” she wrote on Monday. “That’s how I did the back-to-back swim around Manhattan even when I’m so tired. It was not just a swim, it’s a head swim.”
Her observer, Dongho Choi, wrote on Facebook that not only was her feat in becoming the first Taiwanese to finish the three swims impressive, especially in the same year, but what inspired him the most was her motive.
“Hsu wanted to ‘make Taiwan more visible to the world’ through the sport she loves and is deeply passionate about,” he wrote, adding that she hoped to inspire Taiwanese to “embrace the sea” and promote swimming in the nation.
Calling her “a true ambassador for her beloved country and the global open-water swimming community,” Choi said her efforts to promote Taiwan “resonated deeply” with him and made him more aware of Taiwan and its people.
“She proudly carried her national flag from the English Channel to the Pacific Ocean in California and now the East Coast of the United States,” he wrote.
The triple crown of open water swimming is considered a lifetime achievement, and does not have to be completed in the same year.
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