PHOENIX, Arizona, September 22. SUE Oldham, a 61-year-old from Perth, recently became the oldest woman to swim the English Channel, just a few weeks after being part of the oldest team to cross the Channel. Oldham made the crossing on August 25 in 16 hours and 3 minutes. Oldham, an Epileptic, took up swimming around her 40th birthday in order to compete in the Rottnest Channel Swim.<\/p>\n
Previously, the team of Oldham, Tony Parbery, Selwyn Jellie, Les Stewart, Dieter Loeliger and Stan Davies made the crossing on July 24 in 13 hours and 15 minutes. With an average age of 60, the team which had to swim for an hour each in rotation, was ecstatic to become the oldest team to make the crossing. Another of the team members, Jellie also completed a rare individual crossing. Due to persistent bad weather, he swam nearly a month after the team and finished in 17 hours and 5 minutes on August 22. <\/p>\n
That time proved to be inflated after bad tides forced him to swim an extra 5 hours up the coast to Calais to finish. All swimmers were coached by Pauline Pratt of the Barracudas Club. <\/p>\n
"It's incredible they made it once as part of a relay, let alone a second time – and all the way," Pratt said. "It takes a lot of courage, determination and an iron will to make this crossing. People don't realize that more people have climbed Everest than have swum the English Channel. These swimmers are amazing. They put their heart and soul into the swim and have now achieved something incredible."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PHOENIX, Arizona, September 22. SUE Oldham, a 61-year-old from Perth, recently became the oldest woman to swim the English Channel, just a few weeks after being part of the oldest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-masters","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n