What makes a race a monument
To enter this list a race needs three things: to have been founded by 1975, to still be on the calendar and to have a documented first edition, from a newspaper of the time, a club archive or a local chronicle. It is not enough for the club to call it old. In Sète the club's memory dates the crossing to 1900, but the first report naming the winner, Louis Vayre, is from 1908: here 1908 is what counts.
The edition number is not a year of birth. It counts only the editions actually swum, and many of these races have stopped for wars, floods or pandemics. The Barcelona harbour crossing was founded in 1926 and in 2026 was the 98th: in between came 1937 and 1938, lost to the Civil War, and 2020. The Traversée du lac Saint-Jean, on the other hand, carried a “62e” in its name that did not add up: the official website dates the first to 23 July 1955, and 2026 was the 72nd. That is why the years in the list come from sources, never from a calculation based on the ordinal.
The eras
Before the Great War the three oldest were born: Sète in 1908 and, in 1910, two races 1,000 km apart, the Damme–Bruges, in the canal Napoleon had dug in 1810, and the Šilo–Crikvenica, in the Vinodol Channel. In Gijón, in 1916, five swimmers lowered themselves from a boat into the port of El Musel, and the winner was a German, Siemens's representative in Asturias.
The largest group was founded between 1925 and 1935. On 6 August 1926 Gertrude Ederle swam the English Channel, the first woman to do so, and in those years came Tarragona in 1925, Barcelona and Sitges in 1926, Long Island's Cross Bay Swim in 1927 — its website thanks Ederle for the race —, Lugano in 1932 and the Yangtze in Wuhan in 1934.
After the war came Banyoles in 1944, Zurich's Limmatschwimmen in 1945, the Coppa Byron in 1949 and the Vansbrosimningen in 1950. The 1950s brought the long distances: the Capri–Napoli and the Traversata dello Stretto in 1954, Lac Saint-Jean in 1955. The last to enter the list are the Midmar Mile, from 1974, and the Cavi–Sestri, from 1975.
A race on the feast day
Many monument races are swum during the town's festival, and the date follows the calendar of saints more than the sporting one. In Sète the crossing falls during the Saint-Louis festival, together with the water jousting on the canal Royal; in Barcelona people swim for La Mercè, in Tarragona for Santa Tecla, and in Cuenca the Peñote crossing is the heart of the San Julián festivities. In Ceuta swimmers dive into the port on 5 August, for the Virgen de África, at the midday cannon shot; in Crikvenica the swim is on the Feast of the Assumption, the town's patron; in A Coruña on 25 July, Galicia Day, and in Málaga the harbour crossing opens the August Feria.
Many also have a cap on entries, and they keep it. At Stralsund's Sundschwimmen there are 1,070 places, for safety reasons; at the Limmatschwimmen 4,500; the Cross Bay Swim has a strict limit.
What stopped them, and who started them again
A century-old race almost always has a gap. War stopped Barcelona in 1937 and 1938 and the Sundschwimmen in 1940; in Wuhan the Yangtze floods wiped out four years in a row, from 1997 to 2000; in Badalona industrial pollution halted the crossing for twenty years, until the sea was swimmable again. In 2026 the 100th Damme–Bruges, which also counted as the Belgian championship, was cancelled because of blue-green algae in the canal.
Revivals depend on people. The Limmatschwimmen disappeared in the 1950s; it was revived in 1959 by the businessman Benjamin T. Dall'O, and stopped again when he retired, in 1978. The Coppa Byron was swum for four editions from 1949, then fell silent until 1986. The Capri–Napoli, suspended from 1993 to 2002, restarted in 2003. The Traversata dello Stretto was swum with fins from 1975 to 2005, and since 2006 has returned to pure swimming, keeping the numbering from 1954.
From the mile to 36 km
Monument races are almost all short: most measure between 1 and 5 km, like the 1,850 m of the first Sète crossing, the 2,315 m of the Strelasund or the 2,115 m of Lake Banyoles, and at Midmar and Fano you swim a mile. Three are exceptions and also appear in the ranking of the longest races: the Capri–Napoli, 36 km from Marina Grande to the Rotonda Diaz, which until 1992 awarded the world title in the discipline in a single race; the Traversée du lac Saint-Jean, 32 km from Péribonka to Roberval since 1999; and the Toroneos Gulf, 26 km between two peninsulas of Chalkidiki.
On the other hand, many bring thousands of people into the water. In 2009 the Midmar Mile entered Guinness World Records with 13,755 finishers, in heats spread over two days; at the Vansbrosimningen in 2014 there were 15,976 entries. The history of about twenty of these races, with archive photos, is in our story on the monument races.