Championship taper is one of the most unique parts of competitive swimming. After months of hard training, the volume comes down, the speed goes up, and every practice is focused on feeling ready to race.
In this video, I take you inside my taper as I prepare for Pan Pacs, showing what my practices look like during the final stretch before one of the biggest meets of the year.
After months of preparation, a Kalamazoo man named Scott Lacey man is heading north to set a Michigan milestone.
He’s set to become the first visually impaired person to swim around Mackinac Island, a journey of more than eight miles.
He’s putting in lap after lap at the Bronson Athletic Club to prepare for the waves north of the Mitten.
“When I started in November, I might have been swimming 30 to 45 minutes at a time,” Lacey said. “And this weekend, I’m up to five hours is what I swam yesterday in the pool.”
Lacey is a lifelong athlete who lost his sight in his mid-20s. Afterwards he started walking, initially as a way to relieve stress.
That eventually turned into jogging, then long-distance running, then competing in the Boston Marathon and Ironman competitions.
He calls the hours-long swim next weekend a chance to prove to himself that he can do it, and to show that endurance sports can be done with or without visual impairments.
“Anybody can do most anything,” Lacey said. “You might do it a little differently. But if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can make it happen.”
The race is a 2.1 mile, point to point swim that starts in Bayfield, Wisconsin, and proceeds across the waters of Lake Superior to land on beautiful Madeline Island. Swimming to Madeline Island has been a storied feat around the Bayfield area for decades.
โThe event began in 2006 with 24 swimmers and has developed into the thriving event it is now with 600 swimmers. The race serves as the largest fundraiser for the Bayfield Rec Center – supporting year round recreation, youth swimming and sailing classes, senior exercise and socializing, and a community hub.
Swimmers have encountered all of Lake Superior’s moods over the years, from calm, flat water to strong crosswinds with 2 foot waves. This event is registered with and approved by the US Coast Guard. US Coast Guard and US Coast Guard Auxiliary boats will monitor and patrol the event as a component of the Safety Team.
Battling jellyfish stings, hypothermia and a potentially lethal lung condition, long-distance swimmer Hsu Wen-erh has become the first Taiwanese to solo swim the North Channel between Northern Ireland and Scotland, crossing the 34.5-kilometer strait in 12 hours, 46 minutes and 40 seconds. As Hsu bids to complete the Oceans Seven challenge of seven marathon open-water swims in different parts of the world, Hsu plans to take on New Zealand’s Cook Strait in December.
Olympic Swimmers Alex and Aaron Shackell play the classic Guess Who game with a twistโฆ all the people are their 2026 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships presented by OneAmerica Financial teammates. Watch as these siblings take on the challenge and see who wins.
Maui leads the way with the most snorkeling fatalities in the state.
French Artistic Swimming legend Virginie Dedieu led a sensational performance in the opening ceremony of the European Aquatics Championships 2026.
Jennie Shin is pleased to welcome Antoni Vives, policy analyst and the former Deputy Mayor of Barcelona. Vives offers a nuanced geopolitical interpretation of the Ceuta migration crisis, arguing that the events cannot be understood solely as a humanitarian emergency or a spontaneous wave of migration. Vives frames the crisis within a broader framework encompassing historical colonial legacies, demographic and economic inequalities, regional power competition between Morocco and Algeria, and the strategic use of migration as an instrument of statecraft. While acknowledging the aspirations of young Moroccans seeking economic opportunity, he contends that the scale and timing of the crossings reflect deliberate geopolitical signalling by Morocco toward Spain.
