16 YR OLD COMPLETES 14 HR SWIM ACROSS ENGLISH CHANNEL!
Written by Brittany Styles on September 4, 2020
What have you done during Covid? I binged a lot of Netflix. Not this 16 year old from New Hampshire, who successfully swam across the ENGLISH CHANNEL this week! What?! Vera Rivard made her way from England to the shores of France in just over 14 hours. I’m sorry, what? I spent 14 hours watching Schitt$ Creek in two days…on my a$$! That’s impressive too, right?
People Magazine reports, “The water was reportedly 64 degrees Fahrenheit as she swam, and Rivard was accompanied by a pilot boat carrying a crew, as well as her mother and younger sister.”
She didn’t just wake up one day and go swimming. This took years of hard work. “Vera completed her first 1-mile open water swim at just 10 years old, and after swimming 25 miles across the Canadian border two years ago, has been training for the English Channel ever since.”
I was thinking…how did she not get hungry? I can’t go 3 hours without eating a snack! “Rivard stopped to tread water every 45 minutes so that she could eat an energy gel and powdered energy drink, as Channel Swimming Association rules state that she cannot leave the water or touch anyone or anything that floats for the entire swim.”
Vera is a student at Kearsarge Regional High School, and has dreamed of swimming across the English Channel her entire life. Welp, NAILED IT! She celebrated her impressive achievement on Instagram, joking that the very first thing she was doing after accomplishing the feat was taking a nap. Um…yeah! You earned that nap, Vera!
When she completed her journey Rivard shared a photo of her signing her name at Les Fleurs, a pub in Dover where it’s tradition for all who’ve swum across the Channel to sign their name and time on the wall. So cool!!
Congrats to you Vera for a dream come true and a tremendous goal accomplished! Next time, could you aim a little lower though…you’re making the rest of us look REALLY bad.
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