Well done Ingrid Chow, the 4th Hongkonger to swim the English Channel. It was a pleasure for me and Claire to support you and helped you through your tough times.

Ingrid started her English Channel swim from Shakespeare Beach at 18:41, 16 August 2024, and landed Le Cran d’Escalles at 11:50 BST the next day after 17 hours and 9 minutes of overnight swimming. She has become the 4th Hongkonger to swim the English Channel, after Chun Kong Mak (2020), Edie Hu (2022) and me (2023).

She started training for it in December 2022 and got the call from the pilot the morning she was going to swim in a very short notice. She was the only swimmer through that night despite good weather, and she had a very tough time in the morning 11 hours into her swim, but fortunately she got through it and regained her spirit afterwards for a midday finish.

Earlier this year, Wen-erh Hsu (許汶而) from Taiwan and Shulong Lin (林曙龙) from Fujian, China also successfully swam across the English Channel, being the first Taiwanese and the fourth mainland Chinese swimmer to complete the challenge.

Congratulations to Ingrid and everyone who got across this year. I wish to see more Hongkongers taking on this challenge, especially those living in the UK or France.