A 71-YEAR-OLD has become the oldest person to swim around Jersey.
Chris Pitman – who is fitted with a pacemaker – broke the record this weekend in around 11½ hours.
Mrs Pitman is something of a sea-swimming trailblazer, having also set the record for being the oldest person to swim from Jersey to France in 2019, as well as taking part in two- and three-person relays around the Island and to the Continent.
Her effort follows two similar journeys by former Senator Steve Pallett and veteran sea swimmer Sally Minty-Gravett, both of whom completed round-Island swims in their 60s in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
After starting out at 5.56am on Saturday morning, Mrs Pitman swam an anti-clockwise route from Elizabeth Castle and made it back to St Aubin’s Bay by 5.28pm – a time of 11 hours, 32 minutes and 36 seconds.
‘To actually touch that wall at the end was incredible,’ she said, adding that she was ‘elated’.
Mrs Pitman continued: ‘The weather conditions were superb. I couldn’t have asked for a better day.’
Temperatures reached a high of 33°C, with one of Mrs Pitman’s crew members and supporters, Wendy Trehiou, saying: ‘We had to make sure she had lots of electrolytes because it was so hot; a lot of people don’t realise it but you actually sweat when you’re swimming.’
Mrs Pitman said this was her last long-distance swim, although she has made that claim before.
She said: ‘I haven’t got many more long-distance swims in me. The training gets harder the older you get; you’re not as fast or as strong as you were. If I was younger, I know I would’ve been able to do it quicker.’
She added: ‘I did tell my husband that my previous swim was going to be my last one, but here I am having just finished another one.’
Mrs Pitman said that she would not have been able to complete the trip without her crew, which comprised the Lionheart’s pilot, Matthew Clarke, observer Dee Richards and crew members Miss Trehiou and Bekki Kingshott. Lionheart Pilotage is a charter boat business, based in Jersey, which supports open-water swimmers with their long-distance trips.
Mrs Pitman said that her aim had been to finish the swim, and that setting a new record was the ‘icing on the cake’.
