A group of Olympic swimmers hope to set a new record for a relay swim of the English Channel The record for a 33 km swim from Dover to Cap Gris-Nez in France is six hours and 52 minutes and was set by the US National Swimming Team in 1990. The relay team of British swimmers will attempt to beat this mark between 15 and 25 September depending on the weather, with profits going to charity Royal Life Saving Society UK (RLSS).

Olympic triple gold medallist Tom Dean, who will be swimming in the relay with his freestyle teammate Daniel Jervis, and open water athletes George Taplin, Tobias Robinson and double Olympic gold medallist Hector Pardoe, as well as fellow British champion Joshua Gammon.

"The record's been a long-standing one for 36 years for a reason, it's really fast but I think it's about time we took the record back into British hands," said Dean.

"Everything's gotta line up so perfectly, you need six super strong athletes, you need perfect weather conditions, so many things have got to align and come off." The swimmer, now based in Scotland, who is more comfortable in a pool than in open water, said he was brought on board by Taplin, who is a former training partner.

He said: "He said 'it's the perfect time, this is the warmest the channel's been in a long time, we're looking at 19 degrees' and I was like 'yeah, let's give it a go'." And he added: "I now live in Scotland so I've been ticking off a couple of lochs in the past couple of weeks; they've been pretty cold, they're pretty deep and they don't warm up." He said he was involved in a water safety campaign with the RLSS: "They do incredible work every year for drowning prevention week and what they're trying to do is push the message of water safety up and down the country."

Written by

Lakshya