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Legless Frenchman swims Channel…he’s also armless

A FRENCH father-of-two expressed on Sunday that he felt “the happiest man alive” after swimming across the Channel, 16 years post losing all his limbs in an electrical accident.

Philippe Croizon, aged 42 and formerly a metalworker, mentioned that he undertook this challenge to motivate those “who believe life is only suffering.”

Beginning his journey from Folkestone in southern England just before 8:00 am on Saturday, he reached the French coast near Wissant shortly before 9:30 pm, thanks to his specially designed flipper-like prosthetic legs.

Using the stumps of his arms for balance, Croizon maintained a steady speed in favorable weather conditions and was joined by playful dolphins during part of the 33-kilometer crossing, according to his support team.

“For a while, I didn’t comprehend what I had accomplished. It was only that night, when I went to bed, that suddenly I burst out laughing and thought to myself, ‘You did it!'” he shared.

In 1994, Croizon faced a life-altering incident where a 20,000-volt charge hit him as he tried to remove a TV aerial from a roof, resulting in a powerful current surging through him from a nearby powerline.

“I lay in my hospital bed; they had just finished amputating my last leg. Imagine how that felt. Then, I watched a documentary about a female swimmer who swam across the Channel,” he recounted.

“In that moment, I wondered, ‘Why not me one day?’,” he stated.

After training for two years, he completed a 12-hour swim between the ports of Noirmoutier and Pornic on France’s Atlantic coast the previous month, but he was surprised by how much faster his final Channel crossing was than he had expected.

“I thought, ‘Whoa, slow down, you’ll never make it at this pace’. I wanted to slow down, yet I couldn’t. The motor was running,” he articulated, revealing he had anticipated being in the water for 24 hours.

“It was immense. I was in the zone. It was all in my head. I didn’t want to let anyone down,” he declared, stating that his next ambitious challenge would involve swimming between Europe and Africa.

Despite being in the zone, upon reaching France, he humorously noted that he had the scent of garlic, as is the custom for many Frenchmen.

As he emerged from the water, Philippe found it difficult to speak—not due to exhaustion, but because his mouth was full of garlic…

I had previously no understanding of what it meant to be French… perhaps I’m beginning to grasp it now.

Buford Balony says: If this were a woman, she’d find herself in trouble once Sel discovered she was armless.

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