- If successful, 81 year old would be one of the oldest women relay team members to complete the Channel swim crossing
An octogenarian from Nidderdale is preparing to take part in the gruelling feat of swimming the English Channel as part of a relay team. If successful, the 81-year-old will be one of the oldest women relay team members on record to have ever achieved the challenge.
Dot Wagstaff who lives near Pateley Bridge, will be one of six in a team taking it in turns to swim legs of the 21-mile crossing between Dover and France this September. Each member of the team is aiming to raise at least £2000 for Cosmic, a charity which supports neonatal and paediatric intensive care units at St Mary’s and Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, London.
According to the Channel Swimming Association, the organisation authenticating challengers’ attempts, the oldest member of a relay team was in his mid-70s when his group called the Septuagenarians completed the challenge in 2015. However the Guinness World Records lists that relay team member Robert Lloyd Evans was aged 80 when he was in a group called ‘One foot in the wave3’ which, it says, became the oldest male relay team to make the crossing in October 2023*.
Dot, who is one of three of the team members who live in Yorkshire, is no stranger to epic challenges having competed in the tough Ironman World Championships in Hawaii when she was in her 60’s and represented Great Britain three times in the World standard distance triathlon age group event in New Zealand, Canada and London.
Dot said:
When I was younger I did think about swimming the Channel.
But it only came back on my radar last year when a friend persuaded me to join the relay team. The preparation and training has been gruelling in itself. It has involved swimming four to five times a week and acclimatising myself to colder temperatures by sitting in icy water in an outside tub for the last three months.
It will be demanding. We’ll each be swimming for an hour, sometimes in the dark, before handing over to the next member of the team, and then repeating that for at least another two legs of the crossing. As well as swimming in cold water, it will be the unpredictability of the challenge that will be tough, whether it’s the jellyfish, avoiding debris in the water at night, or tackling rougher seas.
Dot’s Justgiving page is DOT WAGSTAFF is fundraising for COSMIC (justgiving.com)
