A 14-year-old California boy has become the youngest person to swim the entire 21.3-mile (34-kilometer) length of Lake Tahoe and complete the alpine lake’s coveted Triple Crown.
James Savage of Los Banos completed the trip across the scenic lake, which straddles the California-Nevada line, in 12 hours on Aug. 1.
Savage and his mother, Jillian, agreed the physical training was a lot easier than the mental endurance it takes to complete such a long-distance swim. The trip across the lake started in South Lake Tahoe, California, and ended in the Nevada town of Incline Village.
She said she knew after the first mile that he would get the job done.
“I had no doubts whatsoever,” Jillian Savage told the Tahoe Daily Tribune. “He’s been swimming almost every day, six, seven days a week since he was 8. With open water, it’s just what he does. But mentally, even though it takes a whole bunch of us to make the swim possible, he’s really out there by himself.”
James Savage said he enjoys swimming in pools, but they’re pretty much “all the same.”
“Open water, you can swim in oceans, lakes, and you get to travel around,” he said.
And at age 8, he swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco.