Ryan Leung Chun-hay poses after completing his 40km swim across the North Channel. Photo: HandoutA swimmer from Hong Kong has become the first resident from the city to cross a channel between Northern Ireland and Scotland, considered the most difficult leg of a gruelling series of seven open water challenges.
Speaking to the SCMP from Northern Ireland on Sunday, Ryan Leung Chun-hay said he was “excited” and “emotional” as he nursed his aching body a day after swimming the 40km (25 miles) across the channel in 14 hours and five minutes.
“There were so many doubts about whether it would turn out the way I wanted it,” the 35-year-old said.
Leung started in Donaghadee in Northern Ireland’s County Down at around 4.30am on Saturday, local time. He said the first four hours were among the toughest, as the water’s temperatures dipped as low as 11 degrees Celsius (51.8 Fahrenheit) and he realised that most of the hydration flasks he had rented from the organisers contained cold water rather than hot.
“At the fourth hour I was thinking if this is going to be the situation I don’t know how I’d survive,” he said. “It was so scary.”
To push through, he tried to “enjoy the moment” and looked for a way to break the journey down into smaller steps, he explained. Eventually, his team found some flasks contained hot water.
Leung said the middle section was easier because the tide helped him along. But the final 7km stretch proved the most challenging, when the tide began pushing against him. Between the 11th and 12th hour of the swim, he felt as if he had not made any progress, Leung said.
When he finally finished in Portpatrick in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, he did not have the energy to pull himself out of the water and he had to rely on the boat’s crew members, he said.
“It nearly got to the point where he thought he would have to return to Hong Kong with nothing to show for it,” he said.
“I didn’t want to give up on myself. I focused on the people who supported me and also the training I had done and the effort I had put into the last eight or nine months. So I think all that mixed together helped me push forward.”
The North Channel is the longest and considered to be the most difficult of the Oceans Seven marathon swimming challenge because of the chilly North Atlantic, rapid tide changes and the presence of lion’s mane jellyfish – one of the largest species of the creature known.
The Oceans Seven challenge includes some of the toughest channel swims in the world and is seen as the open-water swimming equivalent of mountaineering’s Seven Summits.
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Leung, who works in property development, earlier told the SCMP he swam for 100 days in a row to prepare for the ordeal, often for three hours before he headed to work for 9am.
His preparation also included completion of a 10-hour swim in waters of about 13 degrees, which was what he expected to experience in the Irish Sea.
Leung also used his Herculean effort to raise money for good causes. He raised about HK$20,000 for the Child Development Initiative Alliance, an NGO dedicated to the support of underprivileged young people through education, employment opportunities and job training, before he left for Scotland in June.
He said he hoped his experience would inspire children from low-income households to pursue their dreams and persevere through difficult times.
“Sometimes you can’t see the light [at the end of the tunnel] at all” he said. “If they just persevere, [they] would actually see the end. It’s just a matter of believing.”