On Sunday, 15-year-old Maya Merhige completed the grueling Twenty Bridges Swim around the island of Manhattan, raising thousands of dollars for cancer research for the nonprofit “Swim Across America.”
Maya Merhige completed the swim in eight hours and 43 minutes, her eighth major marathon swim.
The 20 Bridges Swim is 28.5 miles (48.5-kilometer). The course includes 20 bridges in Manhattan, and the swim travels through three rivers: the East, Harlem, and Hudson. The East River has ripping-fast tides that shoot the swimmers under the iconic Brooklyn Bridge and other spans as they swim past Brooklyn and Queens. The Harlem River is mellow by comparison, with a slower current and calmer waters. But the mighty Hudson River is known for its choppy water as swimmers navigate under the magnificent George Washington Bridge.
Sunday’s accomplishment wasn’t Merhige’s first “youngest woman ever” swimming feat. Last January, Maya became the youngest swimmer in the world to successfully swim the grueling Kaiwi Molokai Channel between the Hawaiian Islands of Molokai and Oahu, which she completed in 27 hours and 33 minutes. She is also the youngest woman to swim the 10.8-mile Vikingsholm courses of Lake Tahoe, and the 21-mile Catalina Channel between Catalina Island and Los Angeles. Finally, she navigated the San Francisco Bay’s Angel Island and the Three Rocks courses.
The Berkeley, California teen swims because she loves the sport, and she also challenges herself to fight cancer and raise funds for Swim Across America.
Maya Merhige: “I swim for every person who has ever been touched by cancer. Whether it’s for a patient, a doctor, a family member, or a friend, I swim for them all. Cancer is one of the most devastating things to go through, and I swim to honor all those who use their strength to fight this disease. I swim for all of them, but there is one friend whose spirit fuels me. Sam Hallward, a family friend, passed away from brain cancer (DIPG) in December 2022 at the age of 12.”
Merhige swims yearly in her local Swim Across America San Francisco open-water swim. She swims under the Golden Gate Bridge and raises funds for cancer research and patient care at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and USCF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco Survivors of Childhood Cancer Program. Focusing her fundraising on pediatric cancer research, she has raised over $60,000 for Swim Across America.
Maya’s ultra-marathon swims are part of her quest to complete the Triple Crown, three of the most challenging open water channel swims worldwide. The challenge includes swimming the English Channel, the Catalina Channel, and around Manhattan Island. She is scheduled to swim the last challenge, the English Channel swim, in 2024.
Courtesy ABC News
“I’ve loved swimming for a really long time,” noted Maya. “Open-water swimming is a really challenging sport, and it reminds me every day that regardless of how challenging something might be for me, it’s nothing compared to what cancer patients face. It has really helped me put things into perspective.”
Maya can relate personally because she had her own health scare earlier this year. In March, after what should have been a minor ski accident, Maya started experiencing excruciating abdominal pain. After a CT scan, doctors found a large tumor on Maya’s pancreas.
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” said Maya. “The grapefruit-size tumor was benign, and except for a massive scar across my stomach, I will be okay. This brief but terrifying experience gave me and my family a small taste of what others go through when confronted with a terrifying medical situation. It gave me even greater respect for what people with cancer experience and made me even more committed to this effort.”
Already an accomplished swimmer, expect more accolades and cancer research fundraising from this extraordinary young woman.
Follow Maya’s progress and support her cause.
Swim Across America was founded in 1987 with its first open water event in Long Island Sound. Since then, the nonprofit organization has raised over $100 million to fight cancer. In its 36 years of “making waves to fight cancer,” more than 100,000 swimmers and 150 Olympians have swum the circumference of the earth three times, uniting a movement to fight cancer that has created a groundswell of support spanning all generations. Today, more than 24 communities hold open water and charity pool swims yearly, from Nantucket to under the Golden Gate Bridge, supporting innovative cancer research, detection, and patient programs.
Swim Across America’s funding of clinical trials for patients helped contribute to four FDA-approved life-saving immunotherapy cancer treatments: Yervoy, Opdivo, Tecentriq, and Keytruda. In June of last year, a clinical trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering was published in The New England Journal of Medicine that showed a 100 percent success rate in treating patients in a Pase 2 clinical trial for advanced rectal cancer with Dostarlimab, an immunotherapy treatment produced by GlaxoSmithKline. The clinical trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering was funded by early-stage grant funding from Swim Across America. More than 60 scientific grants are funded each year. There are now ten dedicated Swim Across America Labs at major institutions, including Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, John Hopkins Medicine Baltimore, Rush University Medical Center Chicago, Baylor Scott & White Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center in Dallas, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center New York, Infusion Center at Nantucket Cottage Hospital, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland and San Francisco, the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, The Swim Across America Pediatric Research Lab at Columbia University Medical Center New York, and at Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine.
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