Gertrude Ederle was the first woman to swim the English Channel. Here
she is being greased to ward off the cold on her swim in 1926.
Photo: britannica.com
People have been crossing the English Channel for a long
time. At it's narrowest part, the crossing is 31km.
The first person to swim across it was Matthew Webb on
August 25, 1875. The crossing took 21 hours, 45 minutes to complete.
The fastest ever verified swim of the channel was by Peter
Stoychev on 24 August 2007. He crossed the channel in 6 hours 57 minutes and 50
seconds.
Though I wasn't able to find out who did the first crossing,
Andrew Samuel set a very longstanding record of 3 hours 33 minutes and 47
seconds in September of 1976. On May 18th, 2005, Ian Tordoff broke
the crossing record by paddling across in a specialty designed Valley Kayak Rapier.
It looks like the record has been broken again. Olympic
medallist Ian Wynne smashed the record again by shaving another 22
minutes. He paddled across in 2 hours 59 minutes and 6 seconds.
The 29-year-old won a bronze medal in 2004 at the Athens
Olympics in the 500m K1 kayak event.
Wynne said: "It was very different from short distance
sprint racing that I have been used to, but I enjoy the challenge."
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