Olympians bidding for English Channel swim record

A group of Olympic swimmers are hoping to break the record for swimming the English Channel in a relay.

The record for the 33 km (20.5 miles) swim from Dover to Cap Gris-Nez in France currently stands at six hours and 52 minutes, set by the United States National Swimming Team in 1990.

The British swimmers will make their attempt between 15 and 25 September depending on the weather, and will raise money for the charity Royal Life Saving Society UK (RLSS).

The team is triple Olympic gold medallist Tom Dean and his fellow freestyler Daniel Jervis, open water specialists George Taplin, Tobias Robinson and double Olympic champion Hector Pardoe, and British champion Joshua Gammon.

"The record's stood for 36 years for a reason, it is really fast, but I think it's about time we took the record back into British hands," Dean told the BBC.

"You need so many factors to line up perfectly, you need six really strong athletes, you need perfect weather conditions, a lot of things have to go right."

Describing himself as "very much a pool swimmer", he said he had been persuaded to take part by former training partner Taplin.

"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'.

"I live in Scotland now, so I've been ticking off a few lochs, they're pretty fresh, they're quite deep, they don't warm up.

"I've done work with the RLSS with my swim school, 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."

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