Dean Summers grew up in the working-class suburb of Palmyra close to the port and beaches of Fremantle, Western Australia. As a kid, he, his two brothers, and sister swam competitively in the Fremantle Swimming club. He claims to have spent more time at the beach than at school.
At 16 Dean joined the merchant navy (which he refers to as the family business) and sailed out of Fremantle on his first ship, the MV Boogalla. The main focus at sea, he jokes, is to stay out of the water. He effectively didn’t swim seriously for the next 37 years.
Dean is a former elected official of the Seamen’s Union of Australia later to become the Maritime Union of Australia, MUA. In 2000 Dean became the Australian National Coordinator of the International Transport Workers Federation and moved to Sydney. The ITF represents and defends the world’s 1.3 million seafarers.
In 2013 Dean joined Vlad, a Sydney coach with a dedicated following of long-distance swimmers, and began his journey in the demanding international sport of open water marathon swimming. Vlad now boasts the largest stable of Australian long-distance and channel swimmers.
After two years of training alongside some of the best long-distance swimmers in Australia, Dean swam the English Channel. In the next 12 months, he went on to claim the Catalina Channel and to circumnavigate Manhattan Island in New York. This is known as the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming. Dean became the 137th person to achieve it.
Dean is an accomplished Oceans Seven swimmer, a near-impossible series of seven international swims which test the bravery, strength, determination, and resilience of anyone who comes close to it. Dean has six of the seven – English, Catalina, North, and Moloka’i Channel, the Strait of Gibraltar as well as the Cook Strait. The remaining one, the Tsugaru Strait, has been removed from the international swim calendar.
After his Newcastle to Sydney swim, he now holds the record for the longest Australian ocean swim of 95.6km.
Dean resigned from all work commitments early in 2021 and continues to train and mentor others in the sport of ocean swimming.
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Hayden Kelly, ESSAM, AES, AEP, MHPS
Host of the NORMLESS podcast
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