Del Mar’s Knight No Stranger to Success in Rough Water : Swimming: Opportunity knocked while swimmer was stuck in traffic. Now she heads the pack in the La Jolla Rough Water Swim.

It was the kind of wide-eyed, jaw-dropping reaction usually reserved for children who have seen Disneyland for the first time. It’s difficult to describe, even a bit intimidating.

Beth Knight, Dallas-reared and Arizona-educated, found herself and friends in the middle of a horrendous traffic jam in La Jolla on that day eight summers ago. Not for long.

“We decided to get out of the car and walk down to the ocean,’ said Knight, 32, now of Del Mar. “All of the sudden, I see thousands of people. I thought, ‘Wow, it’s a race.’ I said to myself, ‘I don’t know what this is, but next year I’m doing it.’ ”

Doing it any which way she can, the La Jolla Rough Water Swim has become Knight’s own amusement park. Since her first try in 1984, she has been the overall fastest woman for seven consecutive years and even swam the fastest mark--men included--one year, though no one is quite sure which year it was. Sunday morning at the 61st rough water swim at La Jolla Cove, Knight, is going for No. 8.

According to race chairman Bill Uncapher, only two other women have had such an impact on this event. San Diego’s Florence Chadwick won seven times beginning in 1931, and Sandra Keshka won six years in a row from 1969 to 1974. Knight has the most consecutive victories and is tied with Chadwick for overall titles won.

“She’s just fantastic,” said Bill Earley, chairman of the San Diego Swim Masters and coach of Coronado’s masters swim program. “No one’s been able to stay with her. She has everything: speed, endurance, a super-efficient stroke and clean living. Everyone has their eye out for her, including the men.”

Despite her dominance, Knight knows the streak doesn’t magically continue.

“The year I walk out there thinking I’ll take it all is the year I’ll lose it,” said Knight, swim coach at the Jewish Community Center in La Jolla and University City High. “Just because I won it seven years in a row doesn’t mean I’m the best swimmer out there. There’s always someone faster, better, smarter, bigger.”

Or this year, more focused. Knight’s brother died last week, and she and her husband Cole spent the week in Dallas to be with her family.

While her mother played tennis as an outlet, Knight sought solace in the pool.

“I swam every day last week, except the day of the funeral,” she said. “I miss Jay. It’s hard. But the best thing for me is to swim. It’s been such a positive factor in my life.”

Knight has dabbled with ocean swimming since she moved to the area in 1983, but she prefers the pool, where she has excelled for 19 chlorine-filled years.

Knight was a freestyle sprinter who was inducted into the Wildcat Hall of Fame in 1986. She has stockpiled age-group and national titles, is now the world’s top-ranked 30-34 masters swimmer and recently broke masters world records in the 400 and 800-meter freestyles. Next week, she will attempt to break the world mark in the 1,500.

Yet she finds herself downplaying Sunday’s event.

“It’s not that this race is meaningless,” she said. “It’s just that (Jay’s death) takes a little of the excitement away. I don’t say that as an excuse because, until last week, I was in super shape. You just tend to think of things a little differently.”

Described by many as fiercely competitive and the hardest of workers, Knight isn’t sure if her dogged pursuit of excellence will make it to the starting line with her.

“I’m the type of person that anything I do, I want to do my best,” she said. “That’s all I can do. I’m sure by Sunday, I’ll be looking forward to it. I’ll probably be nervous, that good nervous.”

Barbara Dunbar, a top-ranked 40-45 masters and a teammate of Knight, thinks her friend can rebound.

“She’ll put that aside. She’ll do great,” Dunbar said. “In a race situation, she so focused, she won’t let that deter her.”

When Knight first tried open-water swimming, it was with some trepidation. Then, she was at San Diego State, where she was a graduate assistant under Bill Phillips, a recently retired physical education professor, for two years.

Phillips, 63, has competed in almost every LJRWS since 1968. It was he who helped teach Knight to respect, rather than fear, the ocean waters.

“She didn’t like the kelp and the dark water, and she wouldn’t swim with her head down,” Phillip said. “She’d always swim close to me.”

In a pool, Knight would bury Phillip, but it was months before she could duplicate that in the sea.

“Actually, it was kind of like hand holding,” he said. ‘It took several months to get her to feel good in the water, before she was confident.”

With that confidence comes a mutual respect for the ocean and its inhabitants.

“I used to like it murky, but now it’s just the opposite,” she said. “I like it clear so I can see everything. You have to respect the ocean and other people’s fears. Sure, kelp’s yucky, but it won’t hurt you. Stingrays won’t hurt you and the little sharks that are sometimes down there below you. . . . Well, there’s always some fear, you just have to accept it.”

A lot of it has to do with getting the adrenaline pumping.

“To get some excitement, you have to take some risks,” she said. “For some, it’s hang gliding. That’s their risk level. For others, it’s walking across the street.”

Frequently, ocean swims offer rare moments only the participants can appreciate fully, such as the time a school of dolphins frolicked with Knight and her husband in the water near Del Mar.

“I didn’t have a cap, goggles, nothing,” she said. “I just saw them and I said, ‘I’m going.’ There were a ton of them and they stayed with us.”

After 20 minutes, the Knights were chilled enough to head back to shore with the dolphins as escorts.

“They swam between us,” she said. “It was amazing. That had to be the most special experience. It was so spontaneous.”

Knight’s switch, from being a sprinter to her current repertoire of mainly long-distance events, was less so.

“She has great 50, 100 and 200 times, but comparatively, she’s much, much better at the 400 and 800,” said Dunbar, who pointed to Knight’s above-par aerobic capacity. “Sometimes you don’t wind up where you should be because you might not have been steered in the right direction. If she had concentrated on middle distances, you just don’t know.”

But Knight’s sprinting ability has proven useful toward the end of some long races.

“Because I have that background, I can still gut it out in the end.”