Brit woman becomes slowest person to swim English Channel
By ANIWednesday, July 28, 2010
LONDON - A British woman has set the record of being the slowest person to swim the English Channel after being pushed more than 40 miles off course by the tides. ackie Cobell, 56, took 28 hours and 44 minutes to swim from Dover to Calais after swimming 64 miles instead of the 21-mile direct route.
She reached Calais on Sunday beating the previous world record for the longest solo Channel swim of 26 hours and 50 minutes set by Henry Sullivan in 1923.
“I had no watch in the water so I just swam and swam and had absolutely no idea of the time,” the Telegraph quoted Cobell, from Tonbridge, Kent, as saying.
“I kept seeing the beach and thinking I was nearly there, then the tide would sweep me along the coast.”
“I couldn’t believe it when I was told I’d smashed the record for the slowest swimmer. I knew I had been a long time but it didn’t feel like 28 hours,” she added.
Cobell raised nearly 2,000 pounds for the Huntingdon’s Disease Association on completing the crossing. (ANI)
