A Frenchman who gained fame for swimming the English Channel with no arms or legs has set himself a new challenge: to cross five continents in waters marked by sharks, poisonous jellyfish, icy currents and cargo ships.
Philippe Croizon, 43, who lost both his arms and legs in an electrical accident 17 years ago, has begun preparing one year ahead to swim hundreds of kilometers in waters connecting five continents from May to August.
“My crossing of the Channel was a message of hope and of life to all my fellow companions in misfortune,” said Croizon, who will be accompanied by long-distance swimming champion Arnaud Chassery, 34.
Photo: AFP
Doctors were forced to amputate his limbs after he was hit by a 20,000 volt charge in 1994 as he tried to dismantle a television antenna from a house roof.
As he recovered in hospital he saw a television documentary about a Channel swimmer and an ambition was born. He used special prostheses with flippers to make the crossing.
In the first round the pair will swim about 20km in the Pacific Ocean from a fishing outpost in Papua New Guinea to another coastal village in Indonesia. The swimmers will face strong currents and an area known as a habitat for sharks and the poisonous jellyfish.
If all goes as planned, the two men will then swim 25km in June in the Gulf of Aqaba from Jordan to the Egyptian coast. The following month they will swim from Africa to Europe via the Strait of Gibraltar, and in August they will cross the Bering Strait separating Russia with the Asian continent — a round-trip of a dozen kilometers in waters close to 0°C.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier