Englishman completes 175 km swim down Vltava

Paul Whitaker arrived in Prague on Saturday from a swimming challenge that took him 18 days to complete. The 41-year-old Englishman decided to swim 175 kilometers from the South Bohemian city of České Budějovice back to the Czech capital. His goals in doing so? Raising a quarter million Czech crowns for a charity called Asistence, which works with physically and combined handicapped people, and to break the Czech record in river swimming. Did he achieve his goals? And what were the highlights and obstacles of the challenge?

Paul Whitaker, photo: CTK

“I was quite lucky. The weather was nice throughout most of the trip. But there was one day when we had storms, high winds, right into my face. It was a very open part of the river, there were big waves. It was a very tough day. It was really a struggle and I was worried that it would have taken too much energy out of me for the rest of the swim, but fortunately it was just that one day and the rest of the time it was quite smooth and quite comfortable.

And were there any highlights along the way?

I suppose one big highlight was that I didn’t realize how beautiful the river Vltava is, all the way along, from start to finish, the scenery along the whole way was so beautiful, even though I was swimming quite hard, I was still able to appreciate the surroundings and it was a really pretty swim.

From what I understand, you only swam from about 9 in the morning until about lunchtime, so you did have quite a bit of time on land. How did you spend that time?

Paul Whitaker, photo: CTK

“Always after swimming, we went to lunch together, me and the team. And then, an hour to an hour and a half after the swim, the tiredness hit me, so I always went for a sleep in the afternoon, for about forty-five minutes or half an hour.

“And then I had to write my blog, which I had online, I had a lot of people following my blog, so that was nice. And then, in the evening, it was just a case of relaxing and regenerating for the next day.”

I believe that you were hoping to break the Czech record. How did you do in terms of that?

“Yes, I did break the Czech record for longest-ever river swim, it doesn’t count because I am not Czech, but I did beat the previous record by about 30 kilometers.”

What about your financial goal of raising about a quarter million crowns, I believe it was, was that attained?

“We’re still collecting money and still expecting quite a lot of money to come in. That was my goal, and in the current financial situation it is difficult. I’m not sure if we will reach this goal, but there should still be a reasonable amount of money and I think we just have to be thankful for every crown that we get.”

Photo: CTK

And in terms of your adrenalin level – is this going to satisfy you for a while or are you already planning a new challenge?

“I’m not planning anything at the moment, I really just want to relax and calm down, come back down to earth. And then, I’m not saying yes or no at this stage, we will see what happens in time.”