Meet Anshuman Jhingran, the youngest swimmer in the world to cross the North Channel!

Anshuman Jhingran, from Navi Mumbai, recently made a record for becoming the youngest swimmer to cross the North Channel at the age of 18.

Swimming against the tides and battling the chilling cold waters of the North Channel that lie between Northern Ireland and south-western Scotland that too at the age of 18? Anshuman Jhingran from Mumbai achieved the almost unachievable and is likely to make it to the Guinness Book of world records. This young guy swam for 35 km with an elapsed time of 11 hours, 28 minutes, and 52 seconds.

"It feels great to achieve something this big at such a young age," says Anushman when asked about how he feels about achieving this feat. He trained for almost a year and started the training by sitting in ice baths for 2 hours just to acclimatize to the climate of the open waters. As the temperature in the North Channel reaches up to 10 degrees Celsius, and there is no such place in Mumbai to practice, he used to take ice baths. Additionally, he Swam 206 km in the Arabian Sea in a month and did the Palk Strait channel from Sri Lanka to India. "I went to the UK for a month before the swim just to get acquainted with the climate," says the swimmer.  

But this achievement doesn't come with a year's training alone. Anshuman has been swimming since the age of 5 years and has a National level medal for 100 m Butterfly swim in 2018, he participated in the SNAG, Singapore National Age Group Swimming Championships in 2019, and was also selected for Khelo India Youth Games in 2020. He trains for 6 hours on a regular day under his Shiv Chhatrapati Awardee coaches, Gokul Kamath and Rutuja Udeshi, and the training even goes up to 12 hours on some days. He started open water after he broke his arm during lockdown and couldn't take part in championships.

“I did not choose swimming because I had to, but I did because I loved it and continue to do so. And if the situation permits, I would love to take this as a full-time career," says the young boy for his love for the sport.

Also Read: Scaling heights at 17: Mithil Dedhia becomes the youngest person to climb Mt. Everest from Mumbai

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