More Channel Swimming trivia…

Okay so when the wind looks like this…

…I am left with no choice but to play with my database to see what it can tell me about channel swimmers.

Lots of people ask me questions about the data…mainly in the form of “Am I the first person from Sevenoaks to swim the English Channel?”. Or has “Am I the only person called Julian to have swum the English Channel?”…the answer to both btw is “No”…weirdly I even worked at the same firm as the other “Julian”!

If you have interesting (feasible questions) then do feel free to ping me…I will answer the interesting ones as time permits…my next analytic challenge is to answer: “when should I book my swim to have the greatest chance of success?”…I clearly need the answer to that one!

“What is the age range of those swimming the channel?”

Pat Gallant Charette asked me this question so back to the database I went…and the answer surprised me. Captain Matthew Webb was 30 years old when he swam (which btw is hard to calculate because Excel doesn’t like dates before 1900!). The average age stayed at or below 30 until the mid ’90s when it suddenly rose to around 40 which is where it has stayed ever since.

The minimum age crept downward until the 1980s reaching 11 years before it was thought inappropriate to continue to let parents put younger and younger children into such an arduous endeavour – and a minimum age of 16 years old was set for a solo.

But it is the oldest swimmers that have pushed the boundaries in the sport. The trend has been upwards every year since the 1970s and shows no sign of stopping. The current record is held by Otto Thaning who swam the Channel in 2014 at 73 years and 4 months in 12 hours 52 minutes – two decades after his first swim of 10 hours 29 minutes. Both considerably faster than my crossings!

How do the England to France compare to France to England swims?

I have only touched the surface of the subject of direction of swims… here are a few to be going on with but I will add more in the fullness of time:

• There are 1098 England to France but only 52 France to England – which was banned in the late ’90s (last swim being in 1996). The average time for E-F is 13:41 and the average F-E was slightly faster at 13:30
• There has only been ONE multiple swim that started in France. In 1987 Kevin Murphy started out on a 3-way from France but after 2-ways, Force 6 winds ended the swim. Until the ban is reconsidered, this will remain the only multiple swim to start in France