By ALEX COSTELLO
At the one swim meet the team won while Benson was a member, the margin was one point — the one point Benson earned for finishing third in the 100-yard butterfly.
Benson, an attorney who lives in Oceanside, gave up swimming for about 30 years when life started to get in the way, but took it up again 10 years ago when he joined the Aquafit masters team, which works out at the Nassau County Aquatic Center in Eisenhower Park. Now 56, he will be heading to Israel in July to compete on the U.S. swim team in the 18th annual Maccabiah Games.
Benson saw an ad in Swimmer magazine seeking Jewish swimmers over age 35 who wanted to compete in the event. He answered the ad, filled out a registration form Maccabiah officials sent him, and was selected to swim for the U.S.
Founded in 1932, the Maccabiah Games, also known as the Jewish Olympics, is held every four years, and gathers thousands of Jewish athletes from all over the world. In this year’s Games, Benson will be swimming in the Masters division. “I’ve never competed on an international level,” he said. In fact, most of Benson's competitions take place on land in New York courtrooms.
Benson moved from Parkway Village, Queens, to Oceanside in 1993 when a law firm in Garden City made him, as he put it, an offer he couldn’t refuse. “I just realized that in April I’ll be practicing 31 years,” he said. He works mostly with what he calls “people stuff.”
“Criminal, matrimonial, bankruptcy, real estate,” Benson explained. “Any sort of problem people can get themselves into, I help them extricate themselves.
“It’s fun,” he added. “I don’t mind getting up every day.”
That’s a good thing, because Benson is in the Aquatic Center pool by 6 a.m. three mornings a week. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays he is up at 4 a.m., eats quickly and serves breakfast in bed to his wife, Gayle, before heading out. (He also swims with the Aquafit team on Sundays at 9:30 a.m., which he calls his “late day.”)
He found out about his Maccabiah Games selection in early December, and has been focusing his training with the coach of the Aquafit team, Lisa Baumann. “[Our program is] primarily for adults who are interested in health and fitness activities in a pool,” Baumann said, “but it’s also for individuals who want to take it a step further and actually compete.”
Normally, Benson is an endurance swimmer. In competition, he swim several of the sport’s most grueling events, including the 200-meter butterfly and the 400-meter individual medley (100 meters each of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle), which demand stamina more than speed. But the Maccabiah Games do not have the longer events, so Benson will concentrate on the 100-meter butterfly and the 100-meter individual medley.
“So I have to change my whole style of swimming, because instead of being an endurance event, where you take long, strong strokes, you have to do a rapid turnover of your strokes to sprint,” he said. “So, at 56, I have to become a sprinter.”
At his training sessions, after 15 minutes of warming up, Benson works with Baumann on his speed and technique, improving the efficiency of his stroke — and, for the I.M., all four strokes — to shave tenths of a second off his times. “He supplements that with some of what we call ‘dryland training’ in the world of swimming,” Baumann said. “He’ll do a lot of ab work, and he’ll do a lot of yoga for additional range of motion and flexibility.”
When he’s not swimming or getting people out of tough legal situations, Benson plays bass in a band called Plain Jane. “Pretty soon we’re in our sixth year together,” he said. The band plays a mix of modern and classic rock. And Benson, who has been playing bass for 35 years, loves it.
“Loud, nasty rock ’n’ roll,” he said. “And it’s great because you learn a whole new rock vocabulary, and you get away from the old stuff.”
Gayle goes to many of the Plain Jane shows, especially when they’re local. “It’s great to see how much they enjoy it and how much the crowd enjoys them,” she said. More than a few of Rich’s Aquafit teammates have been spotted on the dance floor at the band’s shows in recent years.
Gayle, a self-described land lover, supports her husband’s swimming and goes to his events whenever she can. “It’s something he used to do when he was younger and didn’t have much opportunity to do until 10 years ago, and he really seems to grow with it and get a lot of benefit,” said Gayle, who calls her husband “Mr. Big Ideas” because he always has something going on. “And it seems to be a social venue for him, too, because the team seems to be very friendly and sociable.”
The Bensons have high hopes for the Maccabiah Games, and are looking forward to spending time in Israel. And a medal or two might be nice to add to Rich’s collection. “I don’t always get to see [his meets], but he brings home medals usually,” Gayle said. “We have a whole box full of medals and ribbons, and we have to figure out where to put them.”
Comments about this story? ACostello@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 207.
