Select a region
Two Jersey athletes who have their sights firmly set on France later this year are keeping their fingers crossed 2020 will go swimmingly.
Channel 'virgin' Neil Faudemer and Channel veteran Sally Minty Gravett are both taking on what’s known as the Everest of long-distance swimming - a crossing of the 21-mile English Channel.
They both spoke to Express about the challenge ahead as part two of the 2020 Vision series, in which islanders with grand plans for the coming year reveal all...
For Sally, taking on the Channel crossing challenge has become somewhat of an obsession. She’s completed the swim in five consecutive decades of her life starting in her teens in 1975. She then completed the swim in 1985, 1992, 2005, and 2013.
Then in 2016, after an unsuccessful attempt three years earlier, she achieved a long-held dream of completing a non-stop, two-way – that’s swimming from England to France, having a short rest, and then swimming back. It took her 36 hours 26 minutes.
If successful this year Sally will be stretching her record to six consecutive decades, and her number of crossings to eight.
Huge congratulations to Sally Minty-Gravett MBE, winner of our Lifetime Achievement Award!????????Dedicating a significant amount of her life to swimming, she’s swam the channel multiple times, including a two-way swim and continues to inspire Jersey's swimming fraternity. ????♀️ pic.twitter.com/35eCI9CLAt
— Jersey Sport (@JerseySport) October 18, 2019
Pictured: Sally picked up the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Race Nation 2019 Sport and Move More Jersey Awards.
Despite Sally’s impressive record, she still has quite a long way to go if she wants to hold the title of ‘Queen of the Channel’ – an honour given to the woman with the most number of crossings.
That’s held by Alison Streeter who’s notched up 43 crossings, including a three-way non-stop. Last year American swimmer, Sarah Thomas, became the first, and so far the only person to complete a four-way non-stop crossing which took her 54 hours 10 minutes.
"I just love it," Sally said. "Each crossing is very different. And, although I’ve done swims all over the world there’s nothing quite like the English Channel. It’s got so much history associated with it."
Sally's fastest crossing took 11 hours 57 minutes, but, she’s keen to stress it’s completing the challenge, not the time taken, that’s important.
"There are so many variables that you can’t really compare crossings. There’s the state of the tide, the weather, and the pilot."
Pictured: In 2019, Sally celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Jersey Long Distance Swimming Club, which she helped launch. (BAM Perspectives)
Although Neil has never tackled the Channel, he’s no stranger to long distance swimming. Amongst his claims to fame is being the first man to swim from Guernsey to Jersey. He did that in 2015 in 14 hours 57 minutes, on his fifth attempt.
"Because the pilots have escorted so many people across the English Channel they really understand the tides," he explained. But, that isn’t the case when you are attempting something a little bit out of the ordinary like the Guernsey to Jersey swim. We were learning as we went along."
The first time anyone ever swam from Guernsey to Jersey was back in 1962 when Ruth Oldham made the crossing in a time of 15 hours 15 minutes. After that interest in taking on the challenge seemed to fade, but in recent years more and more people have enquired about doing it.
As part of his training Neil is also planning to swim around Jersey. If he's successful he'll become the oldest man ever to have achieved the feat.
Pictured: Sally and Neil hope to add to the long list of Jersey English Channel swimmers.
Because of the number of people wanting to swim the English Channel, the relatively small number of pilots, and the unpredictability of the weather, swimmers are given a ‘slot’ of about a week, and a number between one and three.
If the pilot decides the weather is good enough to make an attempt, he asks the number one if they want to go. If they don’t want to, then the number two is given the option, and then three. Sally is number one on the tides between 27 July and 2 August while Neil is number one on the tides between 11 and 19 July.
There have been a total of 3,955 Channel swims, with 1,832 swimmers completing 2,373 solo swims.
2020 Vision... 'Mr Liberation'
Comments
Comments on this story express the views of the commentator only, not Bailiwick Publishing. We are unable to guarantee the accuracy of any of those comments.