Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swim, live.

From Asia to Europe, down a closed strait

The only swimming race in the world that crosses between two continents, in a shipping lane closed for the morning.

The Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swim is organised by the Turkish Olympic Committee and is the one day a year the Bosphorus is closed to shipping so that people can swim down it. Six and a half kilometres from Kanlıca on the Asian shore to Kuruçeşme on the European, carried by a current strong enough that the race is as much about line choice as speed — swimmers who drift out of the flow lose minutes they cannot get back, and the finish pontoon is easy to miss entirely.

Two and a half thousand swimmers from fifty countries enter, and the whole thing is over in a morning under the bridges and the Ottoman waterfront mansions. Livebib puts the strait on the map with the swimmer on it, distance covered and an arrival estimate for Kuruçeşme that keeps updating — which is the only way to follow a swimmer who becomes invisible thirty seconds after the start.