Completing a 33-mile-swim by reaching a sandy shore in France after darkness fell
By THALIA BEATY, Associated Press via Springfield News Sun
A 16-year-old from New Hampshire successfully swam across the English Channel, completing a 33-mile (53-kilometer) swim by reaching a sandy beach in France after darkness fell.https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
Vera Rivard, of Springfield, left Dover in the United Kingdom around 9:30 a.m. and arrived on a beach near Calais, France, just before midnight on Tuesday.
She crossed “roly-poly” waves in 64 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius) water, accompanied by a pilot boat affiliated with the Channel Swimming Association. Her mother and younger sister were aboard as her crew.
“I tend to get a little happier when the waves get a little choppy,” Rivard told The Associated Press. “I kind of get a little spark in my eye.”
The swim took her more than 14 hours, and she is the second American to cross the channel this year, the Valley News reported.
“As she leaves the beach in England for her English Channel attempt, I will be the proudest parent ever! Not if she finishes, not how fast she swims, but that she was brave enough to start,” Rivard’s mother, Darcie DeBlois-Rivard, wrote beforehand on Facebook.
Rivard completed her first 1-mile (1.6-kilometer) open water swim at the age of 10 in Vermont, and worked up to a 25-mile (40-kilometer) swim that crossed the Canadian border two years ago, she said.
After that, she booked a slot to swim the English Channel and has been training ever since in both the United States and Ireland, she said.https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
She said she was just happy to get into the water at the beach in Dover.
“I wasn’t sure it was going to happen because of everything that is going on right now with the pandemic, and I was just so happy to get in the water at that point,” Rivard said. Read more from Springfield News Sun
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