A couple hundred people will jump in the Ohio River this weekend, and then swim around. Most in the Great Ohio River Swim will go from the Serpentine Wall to Kentucky and back to the Public Landing. But Race Director Caroline Keating says a few will swim further.
“They will be taken in a boat, two-and-a-half miles upstream. They’ll drop them off. They’ll swim back just in time to join the regular swimmers for the half-mile. So, by the time they’re done, they will have done a 5K in the Ohio.”
Some will be racing, but most will be just swimming for fun.
Keating says the Great Ohio River Swim started in 2007, partially, to support Adventure Crew, which introduces urban kids to the outdoors.
The event is also meant to highlight how much cleaner the river has become. Keating says the Ohio is often muddy, which makes it look dirty. “There’s been a lot of work that’s gone on to clean up the river,” she says. “We test the water quality, and based on the lack of rain that we’ve had this week, there’s probably more bacteria under my fingernails than there is in the Ohio River.”
Keating says the swim is also a bucket list item for some people. “Some people, their parents walked across it, so now they can swim across it.”
The Ohio River froze most recently in 1977, according to the National Weather Service.
The swim starts at 8:15 a.m. Sunday.
