22 May 2012

Rhodes Kiwi to swim English Channel

21/09/2011 10:38:00 a.m.

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Nina Hall (far right) and her Rhodes Women swim team are set to swim the English Channel any day now.

Nina Hall (far right) and her Rhodes Women swim team are set to swim the English Channel any day now.

SWIMMING the English Channel without a wetsuit is a tall order, but it’s exactly what Wellington woman Nina Hall is going to do any day now as part of the Rhodes scholar women’s relay team. Hall, who went to local schools Clyde Quay and Samuel Marsden, is a studying a PhD in International Relations at Oxford University. She and her swim team are waiting for the right weather and the tides. The women were training regularly at the Oxford University swimming pool and fellow Rhodes scholar Marie Rabie suggested the channel crossing. An Olympic triathlete who competed at the Beijing Olympics, she was looking for some other fun challenges to do during her time in the United Kingdom.
“We’re Rhodes scholars of mixed nationalities and we leapt at the opportunity,” says Hall.
In preparation they have swum for two hours in 16 degree seas in Bournemouth, braved the cold lakes of the Swiss Alps and Wales, and their relay team won gold in the the Queenford Lake Relays.
Hall says there are two aims for the relay swim: the personal challenge of getting across the channel and secondly to fundraise £10,000 for the Acid Survivors Foundation in Pakistan, which provides care for victims of acid violence - a brutal form of domestic violence.
Hall and her team are halfway towards their target fundraising figure: roughly £500 is needed for every survivor of acid abuse to be treated.
The swim is 35 kilometres and will take about 14 hours.
Hall says she is having a fantastic time at Oxford, “You really feel plugged into the world here - at my college we recently had a panel on the crisis in the Middle East with some of the world’s leading academics on the issue speaking and friends of mine returned to Egypt earlier this year to take part in the revolution.”
Support Nina Hall’s swim at www.justgiving.com/Nina-Hall0
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Cover Story

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