First Chicago River race held after nearly a century

Underwater in the Chicago River’s main branch downtown — a space not many humans, even locals, are familiar with firsthand — Tim Rooney, 57, felt the rumble of the “L” in his bones.

On Sunday morning, he and some 260 others became some of the first people to swim in the waterway again after almost a century . It was the culmination of an event more than a decade in the making, raising $100,000 for research into ALS, a fatal neurological disorder known also as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and celebrating the river’s recovery from its polluted past.

“This was a great chance to see the city in a completely different way,” Rooney said. “And all the work that’s gone into it, to allow this to happen, to clean it up, is so much progress.”

Growing up in the Beverly neighborhood on the city’s Far S