Hundreds take to the water in annual La Jolla Cove Swim

Hundreds of athletes ranging in age from 8 to 80-plus raced in the La Jolla Cove Swim on Sunday morning, taking part in the country’s second-oldest open-water swim.

They swam past spectating sea lions, flocks of floating seabirds, Garibaldi fish, forests of kelp, and even giant stingrays and jellyfish.

“It was beautiful,” said Amy Dantzler, 61, of Manhattan Beach, who completed the 3-mile swim.

The water was warm, and visibility was clear with little chop. Daylight gleamed on the blue and green waters of the cove. The air smelled of salt and sunscreen. Sea lions leaped from the water while pelicans flew high overhead.

The La Jolla Cove Swim is second in age only to the Boston Light Swim, which started in 1907. The La Jolla swim began in 1916, when it was held as part of the California-Panama Exposition.

The longest race distance was 3 miles, an out-and-back swim to the end of Scripps Pier. There was also a 1-mile swim, and a 250-meter swim for children 8 to 12 years old.

As of Sunday morning, more than 930 people had registered for the event. Most were from California but some were from places like Phoenix, Tucson, Bethseda, Las Cruces and Tehuacan, Mexico.

Proceeds from the swim go to the Prevent Drowning Foundation, a San Diego-based nonprofit that provides free swimming lessons for youths. The nonprofit also covers additional costs that can be barriers to learning how to swim, including swimsuits, goggles, lifeguarding and transportation to pools and the beach.

It provides about 60 scholarships for youths to participate in the city’s Junior Lifeguard program, said John Sandmeyer, vice president of the foundation.

The nonprofit seeks to serve children who don’t have ready access to a pool or the ocean. This year it has provided swim lessons to more than 6,000 youths so far, Sandmeyer said.

“We feel like these are skills for life and everyone should have those,” he said.

Last year the La Jolla Cove Swim raised $30,000 for the nonprofit, according to race director Aaron Brennan.

The first-place winner for the 3-mile race was professional swimmer Eric Hedlin, a 32-year-old who has won two world championship medals in the 5-kilometer open-water race while swimming for Team Canada. He swam the 3 miles in one hour.

He has typically swum 50 to 60 kilometers every week, he said.

Hedlin, who was raised in San Diego and recently moved back here from British Columbia, last did the La Jolla Cove Swim when he was in high school, when he said he did poorly. He swam it this year to redeem himself.

His advice for open-water swimming: listen to music. For this race, he listened to trance electronic dance music on his Shokz swim headphones.

“You gotta enjoy it,” he said.

Michel Young, 55, of Ventura, loves open-water swimming because all he hears is the white noise of the water and his breathing. He finds himself in a meditative state because it is just him and the sea life around him.

“You have to be okay with yourself,” said Young, who completed the 3-mile swim.

Dantzler has been open-water swimming for 35 years and has done the La Jolla Cove Swim more than 10 times.

She much prefers open-water swimming over laps in the pool. It’s more interesting, more challenging and requires intuition and decision-making, such as figuring out where to go.

“It’s different every single time. There’s no predictability,” she said. “It’s never boring.”

Mary Cantini, 81, of San Francisco, did the 1-mile swim. She swims five to six days a week for about 30 minutes, and only in the open water. She swims in the San Francisco Bay, even in the winter, and she is part of the Dolphin Club, an open-water swimming club based at Aquatic Park Cove.

Like Young, open-water swimming is meditative for Cantini. “You go in and you think about a lot of stuff, but you also forget a lot of stuff,” she said.

Cantini used to do Olympic-length triathlons — she completed the grueling Escape From Alcatraz triathlon at age 69 — but she gave up running and biking because it became too taxing on her body. But she still has swimming.

“Keep doing what you can, because you never know when it’s going to be snatched away from you,” Cantini said.