solely of such white uncharted areas. “Eu stögl cumanzar davant mia porta!”—“I have to start right at home” in Rhaeto-Romanic—was my response.
And that’s how my first trip was sketched— in my head, while I drank a cup of coffee. The first great expedition would be in the waters of my homeland.
It is perhaps not logical to believe that I was always destined to take this path. “Logical” sounds in any case too mathematical, too rational. It would perhaps be better to describe it as a “natural course of events”, as natural and obvious as the way a rivulet becomes a brook, a river, a waterway, a sea and finally an ocean. Anyone who shares or shared my feeling knows what I am talking about.
You have two choices in life. Either you bury your dreams as your life unfolds, or you decide “to go for them”.
While planning my trips, I kept on checking the want ads in the newspapers for something that would further my plans. I didn’t find anything. One day, I had an insight. The job according to my profile of skills and experience did not exist. My responsibility would be, therefore, to “place” this want ad. I “applied” for it—I was the only one to do such—and got the job. My adventure—which I christened the “blue miracle”—was ready to be launched.
Two decades had elapsed since the conversation between my father and me on the banks of the brook in Ardez. During these twenty years, I had encountered Gunther Frank in Basel, which is located on the Rhine, and had held a variety of positions. These twenty years had witnessed a series of intensive events, had been a time of searching for me. The only thing that never changed in my life was Cornelia, who was first my girlfriend and is now my wife. I have been with her since I was 20. We two have always worked together to set our joint objectives.
Cornelia viewed my plans to start something new as a setting forth of our way of living. The only question to be answered was: how are we to go about realizing these plans, since doing such would involve the whole family—with this of course including our children.
“Would I swim in pools, I wouldn’t go on swimming expeditions”
The Olympics. The Tour de France. Throughout my childhood, such peak athletic events fascinated me during the day and haunted my dreams at night. And this was not because the media so widely covered them, or because of the money and fame that success at them brought. It was the beauty of the sports and the toughness and obsessive behavior shown by the athletes that captivated me.
I have never lost this fascination, which drove me to select physical education as my major at my university and to get a certificate as a trainer of high-performance athletes. But this world of high-performance athletics did not satisfy me, as it did not fulfill me. Christof Gertsch was voted “Switzerland’s Sports Journalist of the Year” in 2014 and 2015. He joined me in investigating why high-performance athletics did not provide me with everything that I needed, and why I selected the path of being an “ambassador for water” to get there.
Christof Gertsch: Hasn’t every significant body of water capable of being swum already been traversed? The bodies with the coldest water, the longest river, the stormiest of all lakes. I would guess that everything has been achieved in this area. Ernst Bromeis: The opposite is the case. There is so much to be swum on this planet. But I am not surprised at your having this impression. Lewis Gordon Pugh is one of the best known of the world’s long-distance swimmers. In an interview in Forbes, Pugh recently stated “We’ve hit all of the world’s major landmarks. There’s really nothing left.”
And he’s not right? | I am not saying that swimmers like Pugh do not render extreme performances. But I find what their kind of swimming to be a kind of “circus feat”. Such swimmers adhere to rules orienting themselves upon those of the Channel Swimming Association. These lay down the permissible sizes of the swimming trunks, the dimensions of the boat accompanying swimmers—and that’s all. They don’t think big. I consider the “open water” scene to be very conservative. These stupid records—one kilometer in water of 1°, 500 meters in water whose temperature is below freezing—these are all just variations on the same theme. Our sticking to what has been predetermined will not allow swimming to develop. What I am looking for is swimming as a way of going on expeditions, as a way of exploring. And what is being explored is my inner being.
You are trying not to be part of the kind of athletics that is based upon classic ability to measure and to compare. Do you thus view yourself as being a freestyle swimmer—as opposed to an extreme one? | That is an important point. To understand its implications, let’s look at mountaineers. All that would be required to find out who is the fastest climber would be for the two competing against each other to be placed next to each other at the base of the mountain and to sound a starting gun.
That would be a kind of sport that the media would love to cover. But the climbers refuse to do such. They don’t want to bring head-to-head competition into climbing. It’s matter of principle to them. I take the same approach. Like them, I prefer not to engage in climbing which is completely measurable and comparable—that takes place in the artificial courses laid down on walls in climbing halls—and not outside in the mountains. Like the outdoor climbers, I am looking for experiences that do not represent compromises with the real thing. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I am a sort of free solo climber for whom there is just her or him and the wall. And nothing else.
In your case, it’s you and the water—and nothing else. | Exactly. Nothing else, not even an accompanying boat.
But you haven’t quite gotten there yet. | No. And perhaps I will never be there. An accompanying boat has the same function as a refuge in the Alps. It is there to provide you with security against an emergency. The true ultimate risk would be to swim without a boat accompanying me. That was the case in my expedition in Graubünden, in which I swam a number of lakes without such a boat. But the dimensions of these lakes can not be compared those of the world’s great bodies of fresh water.
Is that what you are really looking for—being exposed to true risk? | My primary reason for mentioning the latter lakes was to show that there are still things to be done. What I am currently involved in is something else: the time that the expedition will take, the extremity of its undertaking. I want to go on adventures lasting weeks or even months. I am captivated by Russia’s Lake Ladoga, whose dimensions are 83 kilometers on its east-west axis and 219 kilometers on its north-south one. Ladoga is the largest lake in Europe. I am also fascinated by Asia’s Lake Baikal, which is referred to as the “holy lake”. It has a north-south length of more than 600 kilometers, and it is located in midst of the wilderness. In Baikal’s case, a “free solo” would be possible only on Baikal’s east-west axis, which is 90 kilometers long. Swimming Baikal along its north-south axis would be one of the great conceivable adventures. A premiere. That would be absolute loneliness. Someone will dare some day to try it.
The sponsors. The coverage by the media. The plans detailing each step along your way. Would you agree with my saying that your project displays a certain ambivalence? Your thrust is to achieve something that is in no way a compromise, something that is solely your own, that is totally different. And yet, at the same time, your expeditions contain a certain degree of marketing. | Yes, that is a contradiction. My striving is to find new ways of proceeding. Notwithstanding this, I do agree to compromises. This is because these ensure that the projects are worth doing from the financial point of view. When I embarked upon my new life as a long-distance swimmer, I knew that such expeditions would become my profession. I didn’t want to go to work every day and to swim in my free time. What this means to me today: sometimes I have to cede some of my ideals. I have to ask myself each time: what are my values? Which ones are really important to me? In which areas can I accede to sponsors’ requests in the least painful way? And, while doing such, how can I perform the task that I have assigned to myself of being an “ambassador for water”?
One way to completely avoid compromises would be to stand on the banks of a river or lake and to dive in, and to then swim to the other side—and to tell no one about your plans to do such. Perhaps your wife