Siddhartha Agarwal becomes oldest Indian to swim across English Channel solo

Siddhartha Agarwal completed the 42km swim in 15 hours and six minutes.

When he swam across the English Channel (between England and France) on 29th August, little did the 49-year-old Siddhartha Agarwal imagine that he would become the oldest Indian swimmer to achieve this feat.

“In 2017, during a casual swim in the pool, Satish Kumar (founder of Swim Life) presented me with the challenge of trying out open water swimming, I readily accepted the idea without giving it too much thought. Little did I imagine then that I would end up swimming solo across the English Channel- something I would read on the newspaper as a kid,” expressed Bhoruka, founder and managing director of Bhoruka Park Pvt Ltd in Bengaluru.

His quest in the freezing waters of the English Channel first began in 2018 when he crossed the Channel as part of an eight-member relay team. Incidentally, this was the same year when Srikaanth Viswanathan, also from Bengaluru, entered the Limca book of Records for becoming the oldest to swim the English Channel solo at the age of 46.

Six years hence, Sid, as he is popularly known among the swimming fraternity, surpassed his compatriot to successfully complete the distance of 42kms. He took 15 hours and six minutes to complete the swim, with the last 10kms posing the greatest test of resilience as he had to battle rigid conditions, high tides due to windspeed of approximately 25 miles per hour.

Also Read: Who is the all-time youngest Indian athlete to compete at Olympic Games?

“Until I actually completed the swim, I never believed that I could actually do this. It took me a while for it to sink in. What worked for me was that I trusted my coach, I believed in the process and just focused on what I needed to do that week and that month,” he explained.   

Defying age was hardly a challenge for Siddhartha Agarwal. It was the mammoth preparations for the solo swim under a task master of a coach in Satish Kumar, a former international swimmer himself, that was the most challenging. “I was never a swimmer; at best I would splash around in the pool at my school as a kid. To inculcate the discipline and clock those regular hours in the pool despite my role as an entrepreneur in real estate and family commitments was the real challenge that excited me,” expressed Sid.

“The preparations would start with 3km swims, at a pace of 2min 15secs per 100m. The distance would increase and the pace would reduce as we got closer to the date of the solo swim. Satish was a real task master, his rules were simple: If you can’t achieve that day’s target of distance and pace, he would cancel out the enter session as invalid and start a fresh the following day,” recalls Sid of the preparations leading up to the solo swim on 29th August.  

That he was not unfamiliar of the conditions while swimming the English Channel as he had completed a two-member swim as recently as last year, gave him the confidence ahead of his solo quest. He said, “Last year when I completed the distance in a two-member team, I wondered what next? The natural progression was to swim a solo.”

With the growing popularly of endurance sport among Indians across age groups, open water swimming is truly catching on with professional set-up like Swim Life opening doors for amateur swimmers to take up a new challenge and pursue a fitness regime which promises a lifestyle change.

Satish, who trained Sid, believes this feat will inspire several others to take up open water swimming.  “Sid is really a man on a mission when he sets his sight on a goal. It wasn’t easy swimming the channel. Though the swim was for 15 hours, the training was for 15 months. We had trained and mastered every aspect of the channel before the swim,” expressed Satish Kumar.  

“With his incredible discipline and dedication, Sid could fight the most challenging situations in the sea on that day. This success comes as a huge inspiration for amateur swimmers, regardless of their age, who are dreaming of achieving similar feat in their lifetime,” added Satish.

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