Meet the 70-Year-Old Swimmer Who Keeps Beating Competitors Half His Age

Meet the 70-Year-Old Swimmer
Who Keeps Beating Competitors
Half His Age

Jim West Has Spent Decades as an
Ocean Lifeguard and Competitor.
Today, He’s Still Leading the Pack at Santa Barbara’s Reef and Run

By Christina McDermott | July 23, 2026

Read more from our 2026 Active Aging Guide here.

I met Jim West because I lost a swimming race.

One Thursday evening last summer, West and I hauled ourselves to our feet in East Beach’s sandy shallows, wading to shore for the last dash of that Thursday’s Reef and Run 1,000-meter ocean swim. The finish line was just up the beach, as it is every Thursday for the summer race series.

Polite and admittedly disoriented, I chose to jog behind West, whom I did not know, rather than sprint to cut him off. The race had dozens of people. What did one place matter?

West won that race.

He was 70 to my 28 (and I’d assumed my youth would give me an edge). While I was new to ocean swimming, I had logged more than two decades of training in pools. As the summer passed, West repeatedly bested me in the 1,000-meter. This June, Reef and Run rolled around again, and at the season opener, who comes out on top in my one-sided rivalry? 

Guess.

At that point, I knew I needed to formally meet Mr. West and I introduced myself on the beach the following race day. While he sat with a friend and his dog, Cody, we talked a little about swimming, and I asked him for an interview. A couple of weeks (and swims) later, we had a chance to catch up away from the water.

I start with the age-old swimming question: How’d you start? West grew up swimming, from lessons to Boy Scouts to casual surfing, but his aquatic life changed, he said, on his third day of high school. After a required swim in gym class, the school’s water polo coach saw him and asked him to try out. He took to water polo, and with that came swimming.

“It opened up a lot of opportunities for me, as far as friends, self-esteem, you know, physical conditioning, and it was just a lot of fun,” he said.

West would go on to play water polo at Long Beach City College and, later, on UCSB’s team. 

But time outside of the pool did not necessarily mean time away from the water. West’s community college years were the start of a career as an ocean lifeguard — one that would carry him to Refugio, El Capitán, and Gaviota State beaches for decades. After earning his degree in geography, West said polo tournaments morphed into lifeguard competitions, beach runs, and ocean swims.

“That’s where I found my niche, if you will,” he said. 

Lifeguard competitions are tests of strength, speed, and endurance rooted in lifesaving skills and practices. West competed in beach races and ocean swims (not to mention running and swimming in combination), paddleboard competitions, and dory competitions. 

West’s life would take him to Australia, where he traveled and joined the Byron Bay water polo team, and later to Japan, where he spent more than three years teaching English and swimming off the coast of Fukuoka. Still, throughout his life, he returned to Santa Barbara’s shores, lifeguarding, competing in competitions, and, of course, swimming.

“It’s the one constant in my life,” West said. “Since 1972 to this day, it’s always been associated with aquatics, specifically lifeguarding and lifeguard competitions and ocean swim[ming].” 

For years, West organized a local lifeguard competition — the Grunion Run — at El Capitán State Beach for El Capitán, Refugio, and Gaviota’s seasonal guards. West started the event to honor two longtime lifeguards and friends — Mike Jensen and Rob Gibson — who lost their lives to cancer. It goes on until this day, though West said he has passed the organizational responsibilities on to a current guard.

West still competes in lifeguard competitions and ocean swims. His decades of experience as a guard and swimmer come with wisdom about the ocean, its currents, and its wildlife. West explains to me how to keep track of where you are while swimming in open water, how to use currents to your advantage in a rescue, and why to avoid kelp beds. He tells me how he paces his race.

As with most activities, people make a difference. West said he’s built a community of like-minded athletes over the years. Even as the number of athletes in his age group lessens, he told me, his fellow swimmers motivate one another. He said he calls up far-flung friends (and former lifeguards) to catch up and talk about ocean swims. At the Reef and Run each week, he chats with other competitors on East Beach, including fellow seniors Matt Vaughn and Jim Cherry, who regularly race the 1,000-meter and the mile (and longer) with him. 

As he’s grown older, West said his focus has shifted. His strokes are longer, he said, and he’s more tactical in how he swims. But the appreciation for the ocean and for the community it brings remains.

“In swimming, when you start getting up in the older ages, there are no losers,” West said. “But you’re also competing against Mother Nature, the environment, and time — it’s a feeling that keeps you healthy.”

Read more from our 2026 Active Aging Guide here.