CAPE SWIMS

NEWS

RECORD 5 SOUTH AFRICANS CROSS THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

PRESS RELEASE: 13 September 2008

A record five South African swimmers (all from Cape Town) recently returned from Dover, England, after successfully crossing the English Channel (England to France) this year. The success rate for this extremely challenging 35km swim in cold, highly tidal waters is very low – the English Channel is often referred to as the ‘Everest’ of endurance swim challenges; however more than 3 times the number of people have successfully summited Everest than have conquered the Channel. A reported 987 people have succeeded in this swim since the first success in 1875. The extreme obstacles faced by Channel swimmers include icy cold waters, 600 massive ships navigating the Channel daily, unpredictable weather which changes on a whim, polluted waters, jelly fish, and of course the grueling distance.

The 5 Capetonians who added the legendary Channel to their list of open water swimming achievements are Ryan Stramrood, Kieron Palframan, Chris Green and Fred Louw who all traveled together and attempted the swim the same 6 day window during the second last week of August, while multi-record holding swimmer Barend Nortje traveled separately with his support team and completed his swim on the 28th of August.  Barend, who did his 3rd consecutive successful Channel crossing and holds the record for the fastest English Channel crossing by a South African, was attempting a double crossing (+-70km from England to France and back), but this was unfortunately made impossible by extreme weather conditions.  Andy Pfaff, a member of Nortje’s support team, said “To even complete a single crossing in stormy waters at night under 12 hours was absurd.  If he hadn’t been making such good time, we would have pulled him out of the water after an hour”.

Nortje finished the swim in just under 11:40. Times of the other 4 swimmers were: Fred Louw 11h55, Kieron Palframan12h03, Ryan Stramrood12h53 and Chris Green 14h07. The 5 successful crossings, all in less than perfect conditions, is a South African record for the most successes.

“It is an extremely long and tough swim”, says Stramrood. Usually after a distance swim event, I return home with a triumphant feeling of conquering the swim. With the Channel, however, the feeling is one of extreme humility – no-one conquers the Channel! But if you work with her and respect her, she might just allow you across”.

Nearly 30 South Africans have now conquered the English Channel, a very high number compared to other countries, which just cements South Africa as one of the main centres of open water marathon swimming in the world.  Other well-known Capetonians who recently crossed the Channel successfully include Steven Klugman, Carina Bruwer, John Dickerson, Hugh Tucker, Theo Yach to name a few.