Strait into the Record Books

While most visitors to Hokkaido travel by train or plane, one young Member decided to swim there.

As the thunder clapped and the rain poured down, Member Tariq Qazi wondered if the moment he’d spent nearly five years preparing for would ever happen.

A swimmer since 2 years old, he set his sights at age 12 on one day swimming the Tsugaru Strait, the 19.5-kilometer channel separating Japan’s main island of Honshu and Hokkaido to the north.

The coronavirus pandemic put open-water swim events in Japan on hold for two years. But on the morning of July 20 this year, with the thunderstorms of the previous evening having dissipated, Qazi stepped into the waters off Kodomari in Aomori Prefecture.

The teenager had completed ocean swims of up to 10 kilometers and had racked up 25 kilometers in laps at the Sky Pool, but this long-distance swim proved to be an altogether different challenge.

“The conditions for the first 20 kilometers were pretty rough, with huge waves,” he says. “Once I got closer to Hokkaido, the water became significantly colder but was a lot calmer.”

Traveling alongside Qazi in a support boat for the 11-hour endurance test were his mother, Jun, twin sister, Nadia, and an observer from the Tsugaru Strait Swimming Association.

“The second half was when I was really struggling. I was pretty much just looking at my mom and sister the whole time, trying to motivate myself,” he says. “I did a lot of physical preparation, but I didn’t expect the mental challenges to be that hard.”

According to the association-set rules, swimmers in solo crossings are not allowed to touch any support craft. This meant that Qazi had to tread water while his mother and sister passed him food and drinks with a small plastic box attached to a rope.

“We had energy jellies, sports drinks and powders, bananas and supplements to make sure I wouldn’t cramp up,” he says.

After 11 hours and 20 minutes of battling waves and currents over 40 kilometers, Qazi stepped ashore at Cape Shirakami on the southernmost tip of Hokkaido. At 16 years old, he was the youngest person to make the crossing, setting a new Guinness World Record. He is also one of just 59 solo swimmers to complete it since American David Yudovin first swam the strait in July 1990.

The Tsugaru Strait is one of seven channels that make up the so-called Oceans Seven marathon swimming challenge, which also includes the 33.5-kilometer English Channel between England and France and Hawaii’s 42-kilometer Molokai Channel between the islands of Oahu and Molokai.

Qazi credits the Club’s masters swim program and its coach, Masa Hamanaka, for helping him prepare for the feat.

“[Masa’s] a great coach. He’s always really funny and it’s great to see him in the morning. Everyone there in the morning is really friendly,” he says of the Sky Pool sessions.

Qazi, a junior at the American School in Japan (ASIJ), is doing his own bit to encourage aspiring swimmers. In his free time, he coaches the ASIJ elementary school swim team. Maybe one day, one of Qazi’s young charges will set the next Tsugaru Strait record.