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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, August 03, 2002

Zhao Fails in Attempt to Swim across English Channel

Gusty winds and high waves forced amateur Chinese swimmer Zhao Yingfu to give up his attempt to swim across the English Channel on Friday, his agent told Xinhua.


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Gusty winds and high waves forced amateur Chinese swimmer Zhao Yingfu to give up his attempt to swim across the English Channel on Friday, his agent told Xinhua.

Zhao, 24, started from the English coast at Dover at 16:00 hour GMT on Thursday. But high waves caused by gusty winds forced him to give up after 24 miles' efforts. He got on board an escorting boat at 3:13 hours GMT on Friday. He had swum for 11 hours 13 minutes.

Zhao, a native of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, has started to learn swimming from childhood. He works for a real estate firm in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.

He had ambitiously planned to re-write the one-year-old English Channel swim record by any Chinese, set in July last year by ZhangJian, a teacher at the Beijing Physical Education University.

Zhang, 27, swam across the English Channel in a time of 11 hours and 56 minutes on July 30, 2001, to become the first ever Chinese to succeed in such efforts.

Zhao had planned for a double swim-across, taking the water at Dover, England, swimming across the channel to the French shore before splashing to England, a spokeswoman of Zhao's agent the Kingpromise Consulting Ltd. told Xinhua. He had planned to complete the swim within 25 hours.

Not disappointed however, the amateur swimmer vowed to be back at the channel for another try in the future. He admitted that hehad to be better prepared next time and he needs a stronger build-up first, the spokeswoman said.



Source: Xinhua News Agency


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