Amputee swims Gibraltar Strait
Swimmer completes third stage of bid to swim between the continents - and now heads for Bering Strait
QUADRUPLE amputee Philippe Croizon has completed the third stage of his bid to swim between the five continents by swimming across the Strait of Gibraltar.
He and his able-bodied swimming partner Arnaud Chassery took five hours and 20 minutes to swim the 16km between Europe and Africa, swimming from Tarifa on the southern tip of Spain and Ciress on the Moroccan coast near Tangier.
Using prosthetic limbs with flippers attached, Philippe has already swum with Arnaud from Australasia to Asia (crossing from Papua New Guinea to Indonesia) and from Africa to Asia (from Taba in Egypt across the Red Sea to Aqaba in Jordan).
Next month the pair intend to complete the project by swimming from Russia to the US across the Bering Strait. They will cross the International Date Line as they swim between Big Diomede island in Russia and Little Diomede in Alaska - a distance of just 3.8km but in freezing waters.
It is thought that they may be met by President Barack Obama once they complete the swim.
Philippe lost all four limbs after he suffered a massive electric shock trying to fix the TV aerial on his roof in 1994.
He was in despair, but saw a TV clip of a 17-year-old French woman who had just become the first woman to swim the English Channel and thought he would like to try it, one day. He completed the swim in 2010.
