If Channel Swimming was Star Wars… Captain Webb would be Yoda, the ultimate Jedi swimmer. King of the Channel Kevin Murphy would be Luke Skywalker, while Queen of the Channel Alison Streeter would be Princess Leia. Gertrude Ederle might get a spot as Rey but maybe not, because Star Wars was lacking female characters. CS&PF President Nick Adams would be dashing…
Kevin Murphy, Trent Grimsey, Philipe Croizon, Jackie Cobell, Roger Allsop, Owen O’Keefe In order from left: Kevin Murphy, The King of the Channel, with 34 Solo crossings and a multitude of swims elsewhere around the world, he also has swum longer than anyone else who has ever lived Trent Grimsey, 2012 FINA World number one open water…
Last year on New Year’s day I wrote about my thoughts of the coming year. I’m haven’t done a retrospective, if you follow the blog, you have a good idea of what happened. I originally just thought I might just round-up some of my favourite photos that I took during the year which then led…
The voting for the inaugural Global Marathon Swimming Awards closed at the New Year and early last week the winners were announced. There were three categories of award for the first year, 2012: Female Performance of the Year Male Performance of the Year The Barra Award for the most Impressive Overall Body of Work for…
This follows the 2012 Swim Locations post. I was considering calling it the My Swimming Life series. These photos were almost but not quite amongst my favourites for 2012, which will be coming soon. Like anyone with a camera, you notice that you sometimes take more photos on those really good days than you get…
A couple of weeks after his record-breaking English Channel swim, I put some questions to Trent, from myself and some of you on Twitter, and quite a lot from fellow Aussie English Channel and Sandycove swimmer Craig Morrison. Most the questions are a swimmer’s point of view. I’ve been asked how much long I could…
Narrative imperative required that I leave out some details from after Trent finished his swim. When Trent swam back to the boat with Damián, he was of course tired, like all Channel swimmers, but not unusually so. He is a professional athlete after all. He also wasn’t however particularly bloated. Swimmer’s bloat, Third Spacing of…
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Some messages to Trent involved an ongoing in-joke with Trent’s crew which I can’t repeat, but I can tell you they involved direct messages from a deity. Trent was hammering, burning. His kick was fully switched on, his stroke was up and still increasing and he’d probably briefly seen…
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. During the fifth hour, Trent and Damián had discussed when Damián would come in as support swimmer. Trent requested Damián for the last hour. Around this time Mike also told Trent to take a double-concentration feed for his next feed, “for a boost” but Trent didn’t want…
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. All this time, we’d been in a race, Trent, the crew, Gallivant. Though there were other Solos out that day, including Chloë McCardel‘s second three-way record attempt, (she made it to about two hours into the third leg) Trent’s race was with a ghost, or shall I say, ghostly…
Part 1. Part 2. Leaving Shakespeare Beach, Trent swam straight for the previously discussed port side of Gallivant. Is this time to talk about port and starboard? These are not useless terms, useful only to professional sailors. Port and starboard are highly useful and accurate terms intended to avoid confusion at sea. Confusion in dangerous…
Part 1 To step back a moment, the first post didn’t exactly explain why Owen and I were on the boat. I can only surmise that when Trent asked me to crew early on in the week, I think it was partly because we’d already been touch by email and Twitter, and partly because of…
As some of you know, I was fortunate enough to be crewing aboard Mike Oram’s Gallivant for FINA Grand Prix 2012 Winner Trent Grimsey‘s English Channel Record. And I know you want the details. How did that happen and what did I (we, Owen O’Keefe, Ireland’s youngest English Channel Soloist, aka the Fermoy Fish was…
LoneSwimmer 