ON THE SHORES OF GREATNESS

India’s open-ocean swimmers are taking on— and acing—the world’s toughest endurance trials

- Shail Desai

For four tormenting hours, Prabhat Koli battled the stormy water of the Kaiwi Channel between the Molokai and Oahu islands in Hawaii. It was past midnight, the sky pitch black, and the chop swollen and wild. Every wave was a gamble.

One moment, Koli crested high enough to see the boat bobbing far below; the next, it towered above him. Even the most sea-hardened members of his team were shaken. The kayak pilot shadowing him overturned twice. On the boat, Koli’s father—once a fisherman—retched from the motion. Koli’s progress was down to a trickle, the uncertainty of finishing the swim a constant companion through those increasingly trying hours.

“I had never seen waves as big as those, or such rough water. I considered abandoning the attempt. Then I thought of all the effort and resources that went in for me to get there. It gave me strength to wait it out until first light,” recalls Koli, reflecting on the gruelling swim he finished in 17 hours 22 minutes, at just 17 years old.

Koli’s successful crossing of the Kaiwi Channel was just one notch in the series of tests that make up the Oceans Seven Challenge, the Grand Slam or World Cup of open-water swimming. Completing it requires athletes to cross seven of the most demanding stretches of open water in the world, such as the 14.4-km-wide Strait of Gibraltar and the 45-km Molokai Channel. According to longswims.com, only 34 swimmers in The world have accomplished the feat so far. By 2023, Koli had swum across the 22.5-km Cook Strait in New Zealand, becoming, at age 23, the youngest in the world to join this elite group of world-class athletes.