Since childhood, Mr Croizon had dreamed of swimming the English Channel.
However, when he was 26 he suffered a powerful electrical shock while
changing a television antenna, after which all four limbs had to be
amputated.
But he was determined not to give up on his cross-Channel challenge, and sent
a plea for help to Chassery, who had already swum the 20 mile (32km)
crossing between France and the UK once.
“When I called Arnaud, I said, ‘Hi, I’m Philippe Croizon, I want to swim
across the Channel’. And he said ‘That’s great!’ And I said, ‘Just a little
detail, I’m not sporty’. ‘Yeah OK, well you’ll need to work at it’. ‘I don’t
have any arms or legs’. ‘Oh boy! That’s going to be tough’. But he said to
me straight away, ‘No worries, I’m in Brittany at the moment training to
swim across the Strait of Gibraltar, come and join me if you want to train,”
Mr Croizon joked at the Paris announcement.
The pair plan to leave France on May 6 for the first leg of their journey,
linking Australasia and Asia by swimming from Papua New Guinea to Indonesia.
Over the summer they will then cross the Red Sea (Asia to Africa), the
Strait of Gibraltar (Africa to Europe) and the Bering Strait (Asia to
America).
They plan to finish in the middle of August, after a brief trip to the White
House, having swum a total of over 52 miles (85km) and spent 45 hours in the
water.
Related posts:
Views: 0