New year, new plans for Sophie Etheridge

Adaptive swimmer Sophie Etheridge reflects on 2024 and reveals her exciting plans for the year ahead, including her first ever winter swimming gala at Tooting Bec Lido

A new year, new plans, new swims, new events, meeting new people – what a lot of new things there are to look forwards to! First, let’s look back on 2024, another incredible, challenging and mixed year both in terms of swimming and daily life for me. My highlights include:

• Setting up and being the Swim Coordinator at Hinchingbrooke Country Park Lake for The Cambridge Swimming Company
• Travelling to Wales and Cornwall independently for some intense sea swim training • Seeing events and organisers become more interested in being inclusive and open to those with disabilities.
• A Bristol Channel attempt
• UltraSwim 33.3 in Montenegro

In January last year I announced my plan to swim the Bristol Channel, the next step in my journey towards achieving the Original Triple Crown. However, my training was all over the place. In the past year I have had illnesses, injuries, accidents and all sorts so I just couldn’t get swimming consistently and didn’t feel like I was making any progress. It wasn’t ideal with such a big swim coming up. So of course, I signed up to an even bigger and scarier swim – UltraSwim 33.3 – swimming the distance of the English Channel over four days round the coast of Montenegro!

Despite training being all over the place, in July I managed to beat my 5km open water personal best time, which gave me a confidence boost for the Bristol Channel swim. Sadly, in August when my Channel attempt came around, everything that could have gone wrong in the lead up to and during the swim, did go wrong. Losing crew members a few hours before the swim, crew members being injured, having a different boat to the one planned – I didn’t realise it at the time, but the swim just wasn’t meant to be. I had a mix of emotions: sadness, frustration, disappointment and a great deal of pain. It’s not the nicest picture, but it shows the reality of the physical and mental pain I was in after being pulled out of the water having swum for just over 13 hours. The one positive thing from the swim was that I learned a HUGE amount; I think we always learn more from our failures than our successes.

Once Bristol Channel was done and dusted, it was time to focus on Montenegro. This challenge wasn’t just about swimming. I was scared of my wheelchair getting damaged when flying and concerned I would be humiliated getting on the plane as that happened last time too. I was nervous about not knowing how accessible the local area would be. I was also worried about getting to each swim start and that I could be left stranded without my mobility aids at the end of the swim. There were so many ‘firsts’ and so much anxiety but all the worry was totally unnecessary as the UltraSwim 33.3 team were fantastic and managed to make it so the entire event was accessible and possible for me!

So how about 2025? Well, I am starting the year with a bang by entering my first winter swimming gala where I’ll be swimming 30m front crawl and 30m breaststroke at Tooting Bec Lido. After that I’ll begin training properly, ready for the summer race season when I’ll hopefully be doing a marathon swim or two. I will also continue to teach swimming and run an English Channel Training Camp in May. There are lots of exciting things to come in 2025 and I can’t wait!