Unique | World file holder swims 29 miles round Manhattan in handcuffs

He’s not below arrest — however he positive might use a relaxation.

In September, 49-year-old New Yorker Michael Moreau jumped off the southern tip of Manhattan — and didn’t emerge till he’d swum up the East River, by means of the Harlem and down the Hudson to finish the famed and formidable 28.5-mile loop. 

The (flutter) kicker: He did all of it in handcuffs, and in properly below 10 hours. 

Moreau’s felony-flavored feat earned him two Guinness World Records — one for finishing the longest open-water swim in handcuffs, and one for changing into the primary (and quickest) swimmer to circumnavigate the town’s waterways in shackles.

Why?

“Why do anything?” Capri Djatiasmoro, a fellow marathon swimmer and member of Moreau’s help crew, requested. She conquered the identical 20 Bridges Swim Around Manhattan — albeit with the luxurious of her limbs — on her 63rd birthday in 2014, and stated the frenzy of the open water feels as illicit as Moreau’s steel-strapped wrists symbolized. 

“After I swim, I’m high as a kite,” Djatiasmoro, co-founder of Coney Island Brighton Beach Open Water Swimmers, stated. “I guess normal people, nonswimmers, could relate it to the high after a great workout or incredible sex.” 

But Moreau’s moat-ivation wasn’t kink. It was half nautical nature, half unfinished enterprise, half need to probe the outer edges of merman mastery.

“When I started hearing these stories about people who had not given up on the opportunity to really test the limits, I thought, ‘Why can’t I do this thing?’ That was the beginning of my journey of trying to figure out how I was gonna realize my potential,” he stated. “And I knew I needed to do it in the water.”

Born to swim

Moreau, a inventive director on land, has lengthy been a fish in the water. 

“According to my parents, I could swim before I could walk,” he stated. “I pretty much told them, before I could even speak, that my desire was to be in the water. That’s what I was made to do and where I was made to thrive.”

Moreau made waves as a highschool and school swimmer, successful nationwide championships and setting at the least one file that also stands at this time. But he ultimately hung up his goggles — and didn’t decide them up for the higher a part of 20 years. 

Then, in his mid-40s, the water known as. Freestyle phenoms like Diana Nyad and Ross Edgley seeped into his social feeds. He couldn’t shake the sensation there was extra within the tank. 

“The first thing that went through my head is … that’s wild. Why would you even do anything like that?”

Michael Moreau

The problem? Setting a objective that didn’t really feel like a victory lap of his youth. The resolution? Ultramarathon open-water swimming, or typically any non-pool, nonstop outside swim over 10 kilometers. 

That’s greater than 430 lengths of an ordinary 25-yard pool — plus the uncontrollable currents, situations and creatures of the pure world. Add in logistics like coordinating boat site visitors, studying tides and securing a talented crew for security and help, and the prospect requires the type of psychological and bodily prowess elite lap swimmers not often hone. 

“I thought, ‘This is uncharted territory for me. This is something that I feel like I need to pursue,’” Moreau stated. “And I kind of went out at full force.”

He employed a coach, put his social life on ice and set his sights on one of the vital treacherous, uneven and marine-life-laden open-water conquests: Hawaii’s Molokai Channel swim, a 42-kilometer deep-ocean course with solely about 100 finishers to date. 

Moreau turned considered one of them in 2024, stroking by means of the evening in 13 hours and 11 minutes — the 14th quickest time in historical past. He surfaced nonetheless thirsty. 

“I wonder if there’s something a little bit off the beaten path that is a little bit more controversial,’” Moreau thought. There was: handcuffs. The jailbird jangles had restricted Egyptian professional swimmer Shehab Allam‘s wrists in 2022. His record-holding 11.6 kilometers was the space to beat. 

“The first thing that went through my head is the same thing that I think goes through a lot of people’s heads: That’s wild. Why would you even do anything like that?” Moreau stated.

But the following factor that went by means of his head was an aquatic equation he turned decided to resolve: If as much as 90% of a swimmer’s propulsion comes from their arms, how does one swim when their arms are tied? “Then to me,” Moreau stated, “it became more of a technical challenge.” 

The finest approach to crack it, he deduced, was to lean on his traditionally sturdy breaststroke kick. And the very best stage on which to try it, his logic later went, was the very best metropolis on the earth. 

So after crusing previous Allam’s file by returning to Hawaii in handcuffs in May 2025, Moreau set out, but once more, to do what no man had achieved earlier than: swim the town’s perimeter in a literal bind. “If I’m able to pull this off,” he thought, “this will be the defining moment of my open-water career.”

“Nonswimmers don’t want to hear about it because they go, ‘Oh my God, you swim in the Hudson River?’ I wouldn’t stick my finger in there.”

Capri Djatiasmoro

Swimming upstream

Like members of any sporting subculture, loads of open-water swimmers pursue maniacal-to-mortals exploits that fly below the mainstream radar. 

In New York, lovers embark on annual Urban Swim adventures like circling the Statue of Liberty or front-crawling beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. About 100 individuals pay $5,500 to tackle the 20 Bridges Swim Around Manhattan, simply one-third of the so-called “Triple Crown” of open-water swimming. And if the one factor a lap across the Big Apple wets is an athlete’s urge for food for extra, they’ll do it all over again and loop the town twice. 

Then there are the superhuman stunts, like reverse-swimming around Manhattan — that’s, towards the currents — and powering around the island in butterfly. Just final yr, an area therapist and artist turned the primary to swim around the borough — and then run around it too.

“Nonswimmers don’t want to hear about it because they go, ‘Oh my God, you swim in the Hudson River?’ I wouldn’t stick my finger in there,’” Djatiasmoro stated. 

But for the reason that early 2000s, she’s helped set up swims like a 10-miler from Coney Island to Red Hook, and has solely as soon as been whacked by a seal, sturgeon or one thing else lurking within the nice unknown. “It was very funny,” Djatiasmoro recalled. “I just kept swimming. That was it — one smack.”

Yet even she was alarmed by Moreau’s proposition to tackle the town’s seas in chains. With restricted arm mobility, how would a crew swiftly hoist him, if needed, out of hurt’s method? “He mentioned handcuffs,” Djatiasmoro recalled, “And I said, ‘Wow. Good luck with that.’” 

Swimming a marathon distance in handcuffs requires “an adaptation to remove one of the biggest elements that can support you in any swim, which is the hands, and put all the focus and the efforts on your legs and lower body,” the previous file holder Allam, 35, instructed The Post. He recommended Moreau’s effort, including that he anticipated his file to at some point be damaged. 

“I know how much effort it takes to be achieved, maybe more than anyone,” Allam stated.

Locked up and locked in

Moreau wasn’t deterred. He moved flats to entry a 25-yard, 24-hour pool. He educated in tough situations off of Coney Island, fueled by the liquid carbs stashed within the buoy that trailed behind.

At his peak, Moreau racked up weekly distances nearing 65,000 yards, or 37 miles. He did all of it with restricted wrists and with out leaving his demanding day job. 

“I’m training in a pool with a silicone ring tied around my arms and everybody is thinking I’m doing this weird drill,” he stated. “There’s a lot of second-guessing. There’s a lot of self-doubt. There’s a lot of: Is this even worth the trouble?” 

But the extra Moreau practiced, the extra he bolstered his physique and thoughts. He repeated visualization workout routines and got here to belief that probably the most mentally paralyzing risks — from motorboats and sharks to lifeless our bodies and lethal bacterias — have been extra uncommon than frequent.

“You eventually learn how to adapt yourself out of that mindset and realize what you need to focus on is your swimming, how you’re handling the waves, how you’re handling the currents, your breathing,” Moreau stated. “You try to manage everything that is in your control.” 

Then, on the morning of Sept. 9, 2025, Moreau locked up and jumped in. His crew — together with Djatiasmoro, his sister, a ship captain, a kayaker and a Guinness World Records officiator — coasted by his aspect. 

“I was euphoric,” Moreau stated when he reached Hell Gate, a tumultuous mixture of three tributaries close to Randall’s island, properly earlier than the required time. But his elation didn’t final. Turning onto the shallow, disorienting and reverse-flow waters of the Harlem felt like hitting a “brick wall,” Moreau stated. 

Even kicking down the Hudson — thought-about the “home stretch” with over 12 miles to go and the Statue of Liberty in view — offered a deadly twist: Construction on the Lincoln Tunnel had created a present that threatened to drag him straight below a barge. “I had no idea until after the swim…how dire that situation was,” Moreau stated. 

(Jail) breaking 10

Nearing Brookfield Place, Moreau’s kayaker relayed thrilling information: If he hustled, he might break 10 hours. Most unshackled 20 Bridges swimmers end in seven and a half to 9 and a half hours; Moreau’s objective was 11.  

“Hell yeah, let’s do this,” he thought. When his sprint-kick to the end clocked a 9 hour and 41 minute time, Moreau stated he “let it all out.”

“It was the culmination of everything that led up to it — the uncertainty, the amount of doubt in my mind about: Have I gone past even what is humanly possible?” he stated. “To have that far-fetched pipe dream — where literally everybody is telling me, ‘You’ve gone too far, this is madness at this point’’ —  finally crystallized into reality…was monumental.”

Looking again, the triumph left Moreau with greater than two Guinness World Record plaques and one case of cellulitis, a painful however treatable bacterial an infection, in each legs. “This is really a testament that there’s no limit to how big you can dream,” he stated. “You should never stop doing that.” 

As for his subsequent huge dream? “It may be too early to say.”