How India's Anshuman Jhingran became the youngest person to cross North Channel

Swimmer Anshuman Jhingran.

A bicycle accident during the COVID-19 pandemic forced Anshuman Jhingran to reset his goals. Until then, he had been a competitive short distance swimmer, making rapid progress at various meets across the country.

“I fell off the bicycle and broke my left forearm and wrist. Things were not quite the same after that,” he recalls.

As he waited to recover from the injury, his coach, Gokul Kamath, asked if he would be interested in open water swimming.

“I always wanted to do something with swimming and though this was very new for me, I knew my coach would support me at every step. So I decided to give it a go,” Jhingran recalls.

Anshuman Jhingran, youngest person to cross North Channel.

It didn’t take long for him to announce his arrival. On July 17, he became the youngest in the world (18 years, 125 days) to cross the North Channel — a distance of 35 km between Northern Ireland and Scotland. This was also his first swim as part of the Oceans Seven challenge that features seven of the toughest open water crossings. According to longswims.com, only 24 swimmers have finished it in the past.

“Honestly, I had no clue that I was signing up for channel crossings. I thought it would be the shorter 10km races, since I love competing,” he says.

Racing had always been on Jhingran’s mind since his first meet at the age of six. His parents, Kiran and Sandeep, encouraged him every step of the way, even homeschooling him when needed. Once he started working with Shiv Chhatrapati awardees, Kamath and Rutuja Udeshi, in 2015, his training got more structured and three years later, he picked up his first individual medal at the national level — a bronze in the 100 metre butterfly. But after his first swim in the sea, he realised this would be a unique challenge.

“The waves present very different conditions for swimming. Then, there are times when you can see the finish, but the tide is such that it takes forever to eventually get there. If you ask me, the real struggle is tackling jellyfish. The stings are painful, a very unpleasant experience,” he says.

Anshuman Jhingran

By November 2021, Jhingran was looking to target the record for the most distance covered in the sea in a month. During the longest swim on that project — the to and fro distance of 40km between Elephanta Islands and Mandwa Jetty in the Arabian Sea — he first realised what his seniors had been telling him all along about jellyfish.

“I was stung some 20 times on that swim. The pain was so intense that I wanted to call it off. But it also taught me the importance of just pushing on and blocking out all your thoughts. Because the moment you start thinking, the swim is bound to get much longer,” he says.

Jhingran swam 206 km in all over seven swims that month. When he heard of the Oceans Seven, it sounded like a daunting challenge and in August 2022, he started training for it.

Anshuman Jhingran

On average, Jhingran would spend five hours in the pool each day. Once a week, he would take on a six-hour swim. Closer to the event, he put in a 12-hour effort where he swam overnight and covered 40 km. He would also take ice baths twice each week to prepare his body for the freezing waters of the North Channel. The swim also needed him to bulk up and he eventually added 10kg before the attempt.

“It’s every kid’s dream. I could eat anything that I wanted to, even pizzas and burgers. It was quite incredible,” he says, laughing.

A week before his swim, he landed in Belfast and took to the water to acclimatise to the conditions. However, the weather got worse over the next few days with strong winds and heavy rain. He even heard of three swimmers who failed to make it to the finish and another one who landed up in hospital after a jellyfish sting led to breathing trouble. It all started playing on Jhingran’s mind.

“We were told that there was a good chance of my swim being cancelled. In the next few days, all the other swimmers left. But we informed the pilot that we weren’t leaving until I could make an attempt,” he says.

“A day before the swim, I was stressed out. But my coach sat me down and talked me through it. It handed me a lot of confidence,” he says.

At 10 am, Jhingran said a little prayer and started his swim from Donaghadee. Midway through it, he felt the exhaustion of the entire effort and realised he was in trouble.

“I thought about how I would have to start all over again if I quit at that point. I told myself — do the impossible and you will never doubt yourself again. It kept me going in that difficult moment,” he says.

“And yes, I kept thinking about the pizza that was waiting for me at the finish,” he says.

Nothing mattered here on. Jhingran was stung by jellyfish and encountered huge waves towards the end. It took him four hours to finish the last 8 km, but at 9.28 pm, he had made history after finishing his swim in Port Patrick. The town had shut shop at the hour and all that Jhingran could tuck into were some fries before hitting the bed.

But a massive celebration unfolded at the pool back home. There was pizza, of course, as Jhingran relived his experience amid friends. For what he had accomplished, his coach told him he could have anything. And Jhingran knew exactly what he wanted.

“I asked for a bicycle,” Jhingran says.