BY EKİN ÇELİKKAN (EE/III)
Oğuz Çam, an Electrical and Electronics Engineering student and member of the university’s swim team, was part of a four-member relay team that recently swam the English Channel. The team, sponsored by the Mudanya municipality, covered a distance of 80km in total – from England to France and back again – in 20 hours and 53 minutes, with the members doing hour-long stints in turn. Their swim achieved the third-best time for a two-way attempt and the best time for a one-way attempt among all classes of swimmers this year, and the all-time record for a Turkish swimming team.
The team, “Strokes4Peace,” which swam the Bosphorus and Hellespont five times each before deciding to take up the challenge of a Channel relay, swims in the name of peace, as its moniker indicates. Even though the members live in different cities and belong to different age groups, their disciplined and carefully planned practice routine has enabled them to successfully complete the route that is popularly referred to as “the Everest of swimming.”
English Channel swims usually start near Shakespeare’s Cliff or Samphire Hoe (between Folkestone and Dover) in England and finish around Cap Gris Nez (between Boulogne and Calais) in France, before immediately reversing course and returning to a location on the coast near the starting point, in the case of round-trip crossings like the one completed by Oğuz’s team.
