Incredible! Manhattan woman swims 37 miles around Staten Island — the first since 1961

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — It isn’t very often that someone purposely subjects themselves to a rigorous swim in Staten Island waters. Still, Leslie Hamilton was determined to navigate the Island’s perimeter.

The seasoned swimmer was determined to complete the nearly 37-mile route around Staten Island. Starting and finishing at the Goethals Bridge, Hamilton endured 14 and a half hours of swimming without ever leaving the water.

She started her journey a few minutes past 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, July 9, and persisted through darkness and troublesome wildlife encounters — even pulling off in-water wardrobe changes — all while maintaining optimism and excitement.

A year of training, planning, and anticipating came to a head as Hamilton made her final strokes back to the Goethals Bridge. “I was truly in shock,” she continued. “Once I crossed underneath that bridge, I was speechless.”

Hamilton has been a marathon swimmer since 2019, meaning that she swims distances over 10,000 meters. Swimming around Staten Island has been her most significant challenge to date. In the past, she has swam 28 miles around Manhattan and 120 miles over seven days in the Eight Bridges marathon, which took her from New York’s Catskills region to the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. However, the complex route around the Island was literally and figuratively uncharted territory.

“As a Manhattanite, I’m riding the subway…you see how small Staten Island is to the scale of Manhattan,” she continued. “People sort of forget how large it is. So in a way, I felt like it was a hidden challenge.”

Planning for the long journey ahead

Even though Hamilton swam the distance solo, she was not alone. The marathon swimmer had support in the water and on land.

“The support team is so, so, so crucial,” Hamilton emphasized. “Hats off to New York Open Water (NYOW)…