Channel swimmers making a splash
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A quiet drama is unfolding at the white cliffs of Dover, where 70-year-old Stanley Paris is attempting to become the oldest swimmer to conquer the 20-plus-mile English Channel. The physical therapist and educator has been blogging his adventure from Dover, where he’s training and acclimatizing himself to the frigid, 56- to 64-degree water.
Paris, the founder and first president of the Orthopaedic Section of the American Physical Therapy Assn., is using the 20-plus-mile swim to raise funds for physical therapy research.
On Sunday he passed the six-hour compulsory qualifying swim, which is part of the official protocol for swimming the Channel July 26.
‘Getting to the fifth hour was hell with the cold and the weather,’ he says in his blog. ‘It was raining and now blowing a gale. But this can happen during a Channel swim, so I pushed on. I was taking too many mouthfuls of water. If a wave breaks into an open mouth in the process of taking a breath, a half pint or more of saltwater will force its way down the throat –- no swallowing needed. Swimming into the wind I would get two breaths out of three. Going down wind on the return leg, I would roll, pitch and yaw.’
No slouch when it comes to daring adventures, Paris has raced a car from India to England (12,860 miles), has sailed around the world, has completed the World Championship Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii, and completed two successful Channel swims at age 46.
Also this month, an equally intrepid Channel swimmer posted a record closer to home.
Tina Neill of Minnesota swam a double-crossing of the 20-mile Catalina Channel. She started on the mainland, swam to Catalina Island and returned in a little more than 22 hours. This breaks a record that has stood since 1977.
-- Janet Cromley
Top: Stanley Paris trains for his Channel crossing.
Middle: Tina Neill with escort boat, completes 2-way Catalina crossing.