Hope floats: The new face of ‘Maryland Tough, Baltimore Strong’ | STAFF COMMENTARY

Maryland knows a thing or two about big-time swimmers. Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, was Baltimore-born and Towson-raised. Bethesda’s Katie Ledecky, 27, the owner of seven Olympic gold medals, recently qualified for the 2024 Olympics and has said she plans to compete in 2028 as well. A 200-meter sprint through a chlorinated pool is one thing, but endless hours in open water is another. And so let us add to the honor roll of Maryland’s greatest aquatic performers the name of Katie Pumphrey of Baltimore, who on Tuesday swam from Sandy Point State Park near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, a distance of 24 miles, in slightly more than 14 hours.

The summer swim team crowd will instantly recognize the herculean effort required — and not just because the final destination still has some, shall we say, serious water quality issues. As last Sunday’s Harbor Splash featuring 150 brave souls plunging into the Harbor demonstrated, pollution has become more manageable (although kids take note, it’s not yet up to public pool standards either). No, the real challenge is sheer exhaustion. Ever try swimming for an hour straight, let alone 14 times as long? Check out “Nyad,” the 2023 biographical movie about famed long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, now on Netflix. Good thigh and shoulder muscles are one thing; self-discipline and drive are really what you need.

And so we would humbly call attention to Pumphrey, a 2009 Maryland Institute College of Art grad, for whom open water ultra-marathon swimming is just another day in the park (and the Patapsco). She is the living embodiment of the mantra popularized after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse: “Maryland Tough, Baltimore Strong.” Oh, and did we mention she’s done the English Channel (twice) and circled Manhattan? And that, at least to our knowledge, she hasn’t grown fins or gills?

One part resilient, two parts pluck, a heaping portion of mental toughness and can-do spirit, we could scarcely offer a better example of what Baltimore needs — and maybe, just maybe, already has shown quite a bit of this year — than Katie Pumphrey. In becoming the first person to make this Maryland swim, she has provided a welcome road map (well, nautical chart anyway) for a post-Key Bridge recovery.

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