Bright and early on Sunday 18th September Penguin swim teams lined up at 7.15am with two teams from the South London Swimming Club (and friends) beside the chilly waters of London’s famous Tooting Bec Lido, marking the start of our sponsored ‘Channel Relay’ swim. For the next 11 hours and 30 swimmers from the four teams would battled it out to be the first to complete 370 lengths of the 90m, a distance of approx. 33k representing the shortest route across the English Channel from England to France.
The race started well for Penguin, with Tasja Botha and Lis Holmes establishing a lead in the first hour for teams ‘Adelie’ and ‘Rockhopper’ over SLSC’s teams ‘Icicle’ and ‘Orca’ swimmers.
Across the rest of the day swimmers notched up the lengths as a relay, doing 30 minute bursts or taking on hour-long stints (with and without wetsuits) whilst their team mates encouraged from them from the side, counted laps and discussed the various swim techniques and cakes on offer.
Notable from Penguin were Alex Andrews, who used the opportunity of being sponsored by the length to do 3 hours worth of swimming, and Steve Baker, who blasted away a 2- hour continuous stint without a wetsuit. In the meantime both Princess P and Julia Horning did our Club proud by swimming off the back of a taxing first weekend of the British Waterpolo League matches in Walsall the day before.
As the day wore on some impressive swimming from the SLSC team Orca started to pay dividends – Ben Pennington (SLSC) and Sarah Young (Poly) in particular putting in some impressive performances. Rockhopper were fairly close behind them, with Icicle and Adelie following.
The event officially ended at 4:58pm after 9 hours 43 minutes when Orca ‘landed in France’. Only 20 lengths behind, Rockhopper decided to carry on to complete the distance and finished at 5.30pm. Good work!
So far the race has raised over £800 for Sport Relief and Penguin Club funds – thank you to eveyone who sponsored us. Many thanks too to all those who took part and to Tooting Bec Lido for their support:
| Team Adelie (Penguin) | Team Rockhopper (Penguin) | Team Orca (SLSC and friends) | Team Icicle (SLSC) |
| Tasj Botha | Lis Holmes | Adam Rackley | Alice Rackley |
| Bronwyn Donne | Alex Andrews | Bronwyn Donne (for Will Stober) | Andy White |
| Princess P | Steve Baker | Sarah Young | Will W |
| Julia Hornig | Julia Petchey | Benjamin Pennington | Philip Henwood |
| Charles Wahab | Johnny Wren | Stefan Fritsch | Claire Angyal |
| Esther Lee | Sarah Wren | Nick Murch | George Donne |
| Richard Bones | Tom Enright |
There’s still time to sponsor us…
If you’d like to support us please use the donate button below to make a secure credit or debit card payment. A few pounds from lots of sponsors will soon add up to make a big difference.
See photos from the day here.