HIGH
FLYERS
INSPIRATION
LONG DISTANCE BUTTERFLY
Step 1
Step 2
The hands enter just wide of the shoulders, head is in
the neutral face down position. Start to press down
with the chest
As the chest pushes down, the hips rise to the surface.
Step 3
Step 4
The feet now come out of the water – you can think of
this as a shallow surface dive.
This is the time to relax and enjoy it. Allow buoyancy to
push you gently back up to the surface. Patiently wait
for the finger tips to near the surface before starting
to pull back with both arms. As the finger tips near the
surface the hips will naturally start to drop. This gives
lift and the head starts to come out of the water.
Step 5
Step 6
The hands recover in a wide, low sweeping movement with fingertips pointing towards the water as
this is an easier movement than lifting them higher
and helps take pressure off the shoulders.
What motivates some swimmers to swim long distance
butterfly, and how do they do it? Lucy Lloyd-Roach finds out
T
he 200m butterfly is one of the most
gruelling events in the pool. Many
people struggle to swim 25m fly
so when I start talking about long
distance butterfly swimming it’s not surprising
they question my sanity or shake their heads in
disbelief. Less than a year ago, I would have been
doing the same thing.
That all changed in September 2013 when one
of my swimmers, Emily Jones, told me she wanted
to complete the 2014 Great Manchester Swim
32 AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 | H2OPEN
on butterfly. This would be remarkable from any
swimmer, but Emily had only learned to swim in
September 2012. From a coach’s and swimmer’s
perspective everything I knew about butterfly
was about to change.
Our natural starting point was to research
long distance butterfly as having seen Julie
Bradshaw swim I knew it was very different
from pool-based butterfly. We soon learned
that there wasn’t much out there; certainly the
‘how to articles’ were not forthcoming! Instead,
in the course of our research, we came across
some incredible feats from a small but growing
community of long distance butterfly swimmers.
The natural starting point was Viki Keith, who is
the swimmer who set the standard. She holds the
longest distance recorded for a butterfly swim
– a staggering 80.2km set in August 2005. In July
1989 she was the first person to swim the English
Channel on butterfly and in June 1996 she swam
butterfly in a pool continuously for 129 hours and
45 minutes – that’s nearly five and a half days!
Next of course is Julie Bradshaw,
who is synonymous with long distance
butterfly. She has set and broken
numerous world records for butterfly
including the fastest crossing of the
English Channel in 14 hours 18 minutes
in August 2002, and the fastest
Manhattan Island swim in 9 hours and
28 minutes in July 2011.
Then we finish with one of the more
recent members to join the community,
Slyvain Estadieu, who became the
first man (and only the third person) to
swim the English Channel on butterfly
in September 2013 in a time of 16 hours
and 42 minutes.
The head continues to come out of the water as the hands
pull to the hips. When they get to the hips, the head will
have come out of the water enough to breathe.
Step 7
As the hands near the end of the recovery,
the head starts to go back in, the hands
follow and the stroke cycle starts again.
Repeat hundreds of times and enjoy!
H2OPEN | AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2014 33