Plano West alum Alex Robinson recently became one of 1,800 people to successfully swim the English Channel solo on June 23.
The English Channel is one of the most challenging swims. The journey starts at the beach of Dover, England and ends 18.2 nautical miles away in Calais, France.
According to Swimcloud, Robinson competed at his first swim meet in 2000 and competed until 2013. Robinson was part of the North Texas Zones Team and learned at the City of Plano Swimmers. He went on to join the Plano West swim team, swimming for their 2012 UIL state meet and later joined the Notre Dame swim team. For Robinson, swimming the English Channel was a lifetime goal and challenge.
“For me this was the biggest challenge,” Robinson told the Dallas Morning News. “A lot of people think climbing Everest is — that’s also on my list of things to do — but I always wanted to swim the channel. You could say I’ve been training my entire life for it.”
For his journey, Robinson trained intensively for 18 months. To swim the journey, Robinson had to demonstrate his physical fitness for the swim by passing a six-hour swim test in water that was at least 61 degrees. Robinson trained by spending two to three hours a week soaking in a cold tub and in close proximity to freezing water, in addition to swimming fifteen hours a week at his neighborhood indoor pool or in Lake Michigan.
Two minutes before midnight on June 23, Robinson started his quest of a lifetime—a swim. Seven people were on the boat with Robinson: his mother, Dianne Robinson, a self-employed polygraph administrator based in Plano, who traveled to England to watch her son pursue his dream; Captain Eddie Spelling; two deckhands; Channel Swimming and Pilots Federation observer Debbie Roach, who was in charge of making sure Robinson complied with all the guidelines; and his two best friends, Joe Casino and Grant Tobin, who gave him the food and drinks he needed by attaching it to a rope and tossing it into the ocean.
While Robinson adjusted to the cold, dark waters, he also had to endure chafing from his beard on his arms and around a dozen jellyfish stings. When the sun rose over the French coast at 4:30 AM, light began to show and Robinson felt more confident and uplifted. Robinson continued making an effort to keep his eyes off the steadily approaching French coast. But he knew he had succeeded when he looked up, three miles away and with roughly ninety minutes remaining. 11 hours and three minutes after leaving Dover, on June 24, at 11:01 AM, Robinson dragged himself up onto the beach at Calais. He nearly fainted upon getting back to the boat.
“Total jubilation,” Robinson said to the Dallas Morning News. “I really don’t think it gets bigger than this, climbing Mount Everest or winning a Super Bowl. Something I dreamed of for 20 years. I didn’t have a life for the past 18 months because I was training for this. To see all the hard work come to fruition was total jubilation.”
Robinson isn’t stopping at conquering only the English Channel. Robinson has plans to complete the 20 Bridge Swim around Manhattan in New York City and the Los Angeles to Santa Catalina Island swim off the Pacific Coast in Southern California, even aspiring to climb Mount Everest.
