Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Jim Triolo, 85, learned to swim in the San Francisco Bay and, to this day, prefers to swim in rough waters. Triolo recently won six medals in the U.S. Masters National Short Course Championships.

Swimmer wins gold, silver, bronze

By Michelle Ku

Six medals in six races of a national championship swimming meet is enough to impress any swimmer or fan, but for 85-year-old Jim Triolo, it's just another day at the office.

Last month, Triolo won three gold, two silver medals and a bronze medal in the 85 to 89 age category of the U.S. Masters Swimming National Short Course Championships at the Santa Clara International Swim Center.

Triolo won golds in the 50-, 100- and 200-yard backstrokes. His silvers were in the 500- and 1,000-yard freestyle races, and his sole bronze was in the 200-yard freestyle.

In addition to his individual accomplishments, Triolo helped his swim club, the Los Altos Masters, win the championship in the men's small club--a group of 20 or fewer swimmers. Triolo singlehandedly scored 19 percent of the club's overall 306 points.

What makes Triolo's victories remarkable is that pool swimming is not his personal preference.

"I much prefer open water [ocean swimming]," Triolo says. "Psychologically it's just a feeling of freedom and communing with nature when I see the flora and the fish in the ocean."

Comparatively, pool swimming feels restrictive and confining, he says.

While many people fear swimming in open water, Triolo embraces it. For years, open water swimming was all Triolo knew since he learned how to swim in the waters of the San Francisco Bay.

"I learned to swim in the bay when it was still a pleasant place to swim," he says.

Born and raised in Alameda, Triolo has been a competitive swimmer all his life.

By the age of 10, he was swimming competitively with the Boy Scouts. In high school, he was on the Alameda High School swim team.

Triolo's team won the Bay Area's high school, swimming championships, although there were very few schools with teams or pools at the time, Triolo said.

He was undefeated all four years of high school, and he won a junior national U.S. championship in the 800-meter freestyle during his junior year.

In college, Triolo was a member of Stanford University's swimming and water polo teams. One year, the swim team tied Yale for the national championships.

Following college, Triolo entered the Foreign Service and stopped swimming competitively when he was stationed in South America.

He didn't compete again until he moved to Southern California in 1969.

It was in La Jolla that Triolo began swimming again in the annual La Jolla Rough Water Swim, a one-mile event in the ocean off the Southern California coast.

To this day, the La Jolla swim remains one of Triolo's favorite events. He's competed in it for the last 25 or 30 years and he's placed in the top three of his age bracket every year.

"It's a five-year deal," Triolo says. "There's a guy who's younger than me who I can't beat. When he's in my age bracket, he beats me until I move into the next bracket for a couple years before he joins me."

Last year, Triolo set two world meet records at the World Masters Championships in Portland. He set the records in the 800-meter freestyle at 18:18.19 and the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 4:36.24. The World Masters are held every four years.

Triolo does not compete in butterfly or breast stroke events. The backstroke has become his favorite stroke in the last few years.

"I started swimming the backstroke in the ocean," Triolo says. "You're breathing all the time, but for freestyle, your nose and mouth are underwater more than half the time."

Triolo competes in six to eight competitions a year and he trains three or four times a week with the Los Altos Masters.

"Quite frankly, I'm not very good at making turns and you lose time on turns," Triolo says. "Coach said that if I wanted to break a few records, I have to improve my turns."

Triolo is deciding if he will participate in the Berryessa Lake Swim on June 5, but he will be at the Pacific Masters Long Course competition in Santa Cruz next month.

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