Hundreds plunge into Chicago River in city’s first open-water swim in nearly a century

About 300 swimmers plunged into the Chicago River on Sunday morning for the first organized open-water swim in almost a century as spectators lined the Dearborn and Clark Street bridges and the Riverwalk.

“Reclaiming our river not only creates a recreational space for residents and visitors, but it also puts us on the map, along with other global destinations, where open-water swims have become part of city culture,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said at the 7 a.m. start.

Participants who were swimming the 2-mile course started first, with those doing the 1-mile swim following.

“This is a celebration,” said Doug McConnell, founder of A Long Swim, which organized Sunday's event. “The city has done such a remarkable job over the generations to make sure that this water is swimmable, that the recreation opportunities are what they are.”

McConnell was happy to see Sunday's swim happen. Last year, the city of Chicago denied a permit request for the event, citing safety concerns, and the event relocated to Lake Michigan.

Liz Dillmann, 60, of Aurora has been swimming for 50 years. She said she swam competitively in Australia growing up and still competes in the U.S. Masters, swimming four times a week in a pool.

“It has never been done in our lifetime,” Dillmann said as she watched the first group of swimmers get into the Chicago River. “So I’m just hoping for a clean, good swim, not too cold.”

Michael Ma, 26, of Lakeview said he has been swimming since elementary school and just competed in the 1.2 mile swim portion of a Half Ironman in Michigan. He said he does a mix of pool and open-water; swimming in Lake Michigan is his favorite summer activity.

“I love Chicago and love swimming, so this is like the perfect mix of everything,” Ma said before he started the 1-mile swim. “I love that this is promoted in the city and bringing attention to the river and just how great of a community Chicago is.”

The issue of water quality, though, was not lost on Ma, who said with a smile — “Hopefully, I’ll grow gills."

Event organizers said the Chicago River is now at its cleanest levels on record, the result of a concerted effort to clean up, improve wastewater management and push for stricter water-quality standards.

Maintaining the health of waterways in urban areas contributes to the public health and wellness of cities, and it reduces extreme heat risks from climate change, said Margaret Frisbie, executive director of Friends of the Chicago River.

The advocacy group, founded in 1979, has long worked to protect and restore the Chicago River, for example pushing for discharge from water treatment plants to be disinfected before being released into the river, Frisbie said.

“Swimmable cities are livable cities, and so we’ve literally been working on this for the last 46 years,” she said.

For about two hours Sunday morning, a slice of the Chicago River — usually populated by boats — was instead filled with floating robotic markers and flashes of orange buoys in green-tinted water. They were there to keep the swimmers safe.

Levy Nathan, 26, of Chicago, finished first in the 1-mile course, at about 22 minutes.

A trio of participants were in close contention for coming in first in the 2-mile swim, but it was Becca Mann, 27, a competitive swimmer and winner of last year’s Chicago River Swim in Lake Michigan, who pulled ahead. She finished just seconds over 40 minutes.

The Homer Glen resident said she grew up watching the Chicago River dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day and taking river cruises, so to swim in it for the first time was an "amazing" experience. She said the water is cleaner and clearer than many bodies of open water she has been in.

“Water was beautiful, very clear,” Mann said. “Every time I breathed, I could see the city around me.”

Other swimmers also praised the river’s water quality.

Chris Sheean, 59, of Oak Park, and Ellen Drake, 32, of McKinley Park, said the water has great visibility, and the lack of boats also made for a great experience.

“It actually exceeded my expectations. I could see my hand the whole time,” Sheean said. “Sometimes, when you swim in different bodies of water, you smell sulfur, you smell gasoline, you smell all kinds of weird stuff, and this is fine. It smelled like water.”

A Long Swim, a Barrington-based nonprofit, said it will contribute $100,000 to fund ALS research at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Another $50,000 will help fund swim lessons for about 2,000 youths at the Salvation Army’s Kroc Center.