A man from Butler, TN has taken his enjoyment of swimming to a whole new level recently by swimming in Watauga Lake year round. A few years ago, 66 year old Donald Winters, who is the pastor of Sugar Grover Baptist Church in Butler began swimming in the lake during the winter months after researching the health benefits of “ice swimming.” During his research he came across a group called the International Ice Swimmers Association (IISA) that was formed in 2009. The association has been working to have ice swimming become a Winter Olympics sport. According to their website, Ice Swimming is swimming in water temperature of 5.0C / 41.0F or less unassisted, with a silicon cap, pair of goggles and standard swimming costume. IISA has established a comprehensive set of safety and swimming rules together with worldwide swim records. IISA has members in 73 countries and Ice Swimmers [1km+] in 43 countries.
Donald Winters recently joined the association and set his eyes on becoming the oldest person in the world to swim a mile in water at or below 41∞ F. The Guinness Book of Records states that as of recently the oldest person on record to complete an ice mile was someone in Ireland who was 66 years and 12 days old. Winters is now 66 and four months old.
Winters swims in the lake 3 times a week already. He has swam a couple of practice runs with success. However, the water temperature has been “too warm” at approximately 44∞ F. Winters and a couple members of his support team have been checking the temperature of Watauga Lake periodically waiting for the water temperature gets low enough to swim an “official” ice mile. The team also needed a day that wasn’t too windy to protect Winters from frostbite when he exits the lake. The recent weeks of cold and snow had finally pushed the water temperature down to 38 degrees and on Tuesday, January 23rd Winters successfully completed his mile long swim in the frigid Watauga Lake waters. Both the air and water temperature was at 38 degrees Fahrenheit and it took Winters 53 minutes to swim the one mile distance.
Last Saturday Winters and his team spent about 3 hours submitting all of the documents, important paperwork, pictures and videos to the IISA. By Sunday morning Winters had confirmation that his Ice Mile had been accepted by the IISA. It’s official! His feat is already posted on the IISA website https://internationaliceswimming.com. If you go to the home page and look under the tab “Ice Mile” and scroll down to the bottom of “Ice Mile Records” you will see the tab with “Oldest Ice Mile Swimmers.” At the very top of the list is now “Don Winters” who has put USA on the top of the top 10 list of oldest ice mile swimmers. And he is also the only American on the top 10 list.
Winters daughter, Sarah Esquivel reported that when her dad got out of the water he was shaking and freezing as you can imagine. After the doctor on hand gave Winters a quick heart check the new world record holder headed home to sit in front of his wood stove to warm up. Winters said that he feels with him breaking this international record, it can show everyone that you are never too old to make history!
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