2023-07-11 18:40:09
Stève Stievenart will swim to Catalina Island and Los Angeles, between Tuesday 27th and Friday 30th June. NICOLAS PELTIER / STÈVE THE SEAL
Behind his meter eighty and his 110 kilos, Stève Stievenart hides a slender voice that contrasts with the colossus. The one we nicknamed “Stève the seal” is one of those whom life has not spared, so this born refractory responded to the extreme. The latest feat of this self-taught open water swimmer, who became famous for his round trips in the English Channel? He became the first to make three crossings between Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles (120 kilometers in total), between Tuesday June 27 and Friday June 30. All in a swimsuit and in oscillating water “between 16 and 19 degrees” for 51 hours and 18 minutes. A performance that places the Northerner in the pantheon of extreme swimmers. “It was the toughest race of my career,” he says, a week later.
Read the portrait (2021): Article reserved for our subscribers “Stève le phoque”, combat swimmer
Hit by the kayaker who accompanies him from the first hour of the race, Stève, coated with “Vaseline and Sudocrem to prevent chafing and protect [sa] skin of salt, completed his journey despite “terrible neck and back pain”, he explains. The 46-year-old swimmer thought he had to give up, especially since the sea salt altered his end of the race: “My mouth swelled up and blocked the air inlet. For five hours, I lived through hell. » Eyes extinguished, cheeks discolored, limbs inert and skin cold like that of a corpse, Stève Stievenart crawled to his oxygen bottle. “For a week, I still have not found sleep”relate-t-il.
To reach the firmament of his discipline, Stève is compelled to an iron discipline. The sessions inflicted on him by his mentor and trainer Kevin Murphy, author of 34 Channel crossings, are up to the ambitions of the swimmer from Wimereux (Pas-de-Calais): “I train twice a day, whenever the tide comes in, day and night. » The man-fish, admirer of Teddy Riner, is a perfectionist. To alleviate the pressure inflicted on the eyeballs by glasses, Stève is “left with 14 pairs of glasses, which he placed in the sun to soften them”.
Stève Stievenart off Los Angeles, Tuesday June 27. NICOLAS PELTIER / STÈVE THE SEAL
Before starting to swim in open water, at the age of 40, following a painful separation, this son of a rally driver was “an experienced runner”, with two marathons on the list. During his first crossing of the Channel, in 2018, Stève Stievenart lost 7 kilos in the space of twenty hours. Inspired by the habits of sea bass before performing their great migrations, he transformed his diet: 1 kilo of oily fish per day at the rate of 5 daily meals.
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