Bengaluru’s Siddhartha becomes oldest Indian to swim solo across English Channel

Siddhartha Agarwal, at 49 years of age, became the oldest Indian to swim across the English Channel, achieving the feat on August 29.

Siddhartha took 15 hours and six minutes to swim across the 42km waterway.

The Bengaluru-based swimmer’s quest to cross the Channel first began in 2018 when he swam the waterway as part of an eight-member relay team.

It was the same year when Srikaanth Viswanathan, also from Bengaluru, entered the record books for becoming the oldest to swim the English Channel solo at the age of 46.

“In 2017, during a casual swim in the pool, Satish Kumar (founder of Swim Life) presented me with the challenge of trying out open-water swimming, I accepted the idea. Little did I imagine then that I would end up swimming solo across the English Channel,” said Siddhartha.

The last 10kms posed the greatest challenge to the swimmer as he had to battle rigid conditions and high tides.

“Until I actually completed the swim, I never believed that I could actually do this. It took me a while for it to sink in. What worked for me was that I trusted my coach, I believed in the process and just focused on what I needed to do that week and that month,” he said.

“The preparations started with 3km swims, at a pace of 2min 15secs per 100m. The distance would increase and the pace would reduce as we got closer to the date of the solo swim.

“(Coach) Satish was a real task master, his rules were simple: If you can’t achieve that day’s target of distance and pace, he would cancel out the enter session as invalid and start a fresh the following day,” said Siddhartha of the preparations leading up to the solo swim.