Mexican swimmer Patricia Guerra plans to swim 48 kilometers around Manhattan on Saturday, a month after breaking the women’s world record for swimming across the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco.
The 51-year-old athlete flew to New York on Wednesday to prepare for her latest challenge, which she aims to complete in under nine hours.
“The idea is to go around the 20 bridges on the island; in some sections there will be a favorable current, and thanks to that I will be able to swim at a speed of up to 6 km/h,” she told reporters.
“I will concentrate more on time than distance. It will be the way my head will deal with those 48 kilometers; do not pay attention to the distance.”
On July 8, Guerra swam the Strait of Gibraltar from Tarifa, Spain, to Tangier, Morocco, with a time of 2:43:04, beating the previous women’s record set by 21-year-old Nathalie Pohl in 2016.
Both swims are part of her 50 + 1: 2023 project, which aims to show that women over 50 do not have to lose their physical fitness.
“If you have hormonal and physical monitoring, you can continue chasing your dreams,” she said before taking on the Strait of Gibraltar.
Guerra is a former triathlete who has completed many strenuous open-water swims in her career, including the English Channel in 2004 and the nine bays of Huatulco, Oaxaca, in the Mexican Pacific, in 2006.
In 2007, she sustained multiple fractures after she was struck by a whale in southern Chile’s Strait of Magellan but still returned to competitive swimming.
She is also a dedicated philanthropist, who has supported numerous cancer-prevention and nutritional programs in disadvantaged sectors of Mexico through her Patricia Guerra Foundation.
With reports from Aristegui Noticias and Infobae
