Swimmer forced to cancel distance record attempt

A LONG-DISTANCE swimmer who had been preparing for up to a year for a record-breaking swim from Ireland to Wales this week is instead suffering heartache.

Due to an injury, he has been forced to abandon the 14 hour-long swim.

Twenty-four-year-old Jim Swift was hoping to get into the record books by swimming 54 miles from Ireland to Wales this week. The postgraduate student was forced to pull out though after a groin strain.

“I pulled the muscle a few weeks ago. I did a local, 24-mile swim in Tramore in the past few days, just to stay in shape. But I was forced to cancel the record attempt.

“It was for charity and I’d put a lot of work into it. The muscle strain would just have held me back too much,” the Waterford man said.

Jim has been bulking up and consuming up to 10,000 calories a day since his training began several months ago. He’d even been whipping himself with nettles to simulate and get his body used to the sting of jellyfish.

“I’d been doing things like having a big bowl of spaghetti bolognese for breakfast. It was a tough task in the early hours of the morning. Robert de Niro was my inspiration. He actually moved to Italy in the run-up to Raging Bull because he had to gain so much weight for the film.”

Jim successfully swam the English Channel in 2003. Only 39 people in the World have completed the English Channel, but no one has ever conquered the longer, Irish Sea strip between Ireland and Wales.

The training has not all been in vain. Jim now hopes make a fresh attempt at the swim next summer.

And in the meantime, he’s hoping he might even secure a place on the Irish long-distance swimming team for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

“My focus is now on doing the swim next Summer and hopefully getting on the Irish Olympic team.”