San Francisco Frontiers - 'The sea rejuvenates you': Cuban seniors defy aging by diving in

The 87-year-old former revolutionary, who helped Fidel Castro fight his way to victory over a dictatorship in 1959, took up swimming relatively late in life, in his sixties.

Before that, "I knew how to float, I used to bob about in the water like everyone else but I didn't know the different strokes," the silver-haired ex-soldier said.

Now, he spends a full two hours a day cleaving through the aquamarine waters of the Caribbean and has a bunch of amateur swimming titles to his name.

"I have almost no challengers. In my age category, very few people know how to swim," he confided with a smile.

Lazaro Diaz, 75, was also a pensioner when he learned to swim as a panacea for a weak heart and recurring back pain.

"I was starting to feel the effects of aging," said Diaz, who undertakes a six-kilometer (3.7-mile) round trip from home every day to get in his vivifying 400-meter (1,300-foot) swim.

"In the water I don't feel (any pain)," he added.

Juventud Acumulada operates out of one of a string of leisure centers built for the Cuban elite along the coast west of Havana between the 1930s and 1950s.

The centers were later nationalized by Castro's communist government and transformed into "workers' social circles" or CSOs.

The glamor of the Otto Parellada CSO -- named after a young rebel killed fighting the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship -- has long since been eroded by the elements and successive economic crises.

The pale green paint on the club house is peeling.

And the ladder that once led from the pier to the water was swept away by a hurricane, meaning swimmers now have to negotiate a slippery sea wall.

But the bronzed elder statesmen and -women of swimming remain undaunted.

Juventud Acumulada was founded by a local amateur swimming champion, Ramon Cordoves, who honed his technique by reading tips from legendary Romanian-born American Olympian and actor Johnny Weissmuller, of "Tarzan" fame.

The club is now open to swimmers of all ages but is most closely associated with its old-timers, who fly its colors at competitions across the island.

Its oldest member, Maria Antonia Cendoya, recently took gold in a 50-meter race at the tender age of 88.

At a time when Europeans are going crazy for wild swimming in lakes, lochs and oceans, Quintana summed up the benefits of a dip in the sea: "The sea rejuvenates you, gives you energy, makes you happy and relieves stress. The sea is wonderful."

U.Lee--SFF