Meet the Hong Kong art dealer who conquered swimming’s open water triple crown, and has world’s oceans in her sights
- Edie Hu swam the English and Catalina channels, and around Manhattan Island to complete one of the hardest challenges in her sport
- But the ‘slightly chubby’ 48-year-old says she fell in love with swimming by tackling Hong Kong’s open waters
Months of planning, years of training and a gruelling 12 hours in the ocean fighting waves, cold water and your own desire to stop are just some of the reasons most of us will never swim the English Channel.
But for 48-year-old Edie Hu swimming from England to France is something that can be done on a whim.
“This is not normally something that people do spontaneously, people sign up years in advance and then they train and train,” the amateur swimmer told the Post.
“I was visiting my friend in Italy and he asked me if I wanted to be in his boat [as a member of his support team] when he swam the English Channel the following week.
“When we got there he had the most perfect conditions, there was a heatwave at the time and the water was so flat, I thought ‘I could do this’,” Hu said.
The swim from the south of England to the north of France in August 2022 was Hu’s first step in conquering the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming; three of the world’s most difficult open water swims.
