The chrono shows 9 hours and 22 minutes, this Sunday August 21 at the end of the afternoon, when Marion Joffle sets foot on the austere rocks of Cap Gris-Nez, in Pas-de-Calais. Channel crossing validated for the young 23-year-old from Calvados, French women’s record broken by 20 minutes as a bonus. “When I started to distinguish the French coasts, the fields, the houses and then the silhouette of my mother, I had to go to the end”, confides the one who is nicknamed the “Smiling Penguin”.
After raising her arms and giving “a big hug” to her loved ones, Marion Joffle has already returned to England, where she left, a country she will have to leave in a more conventional way, after a short week of rest. “I don’t realize yet, even if my body makes me understand that it was very real. In my mind, it went quickly. »
Marion Joffle “supported the feeling of freshness” of the English Channel (around 18°C). It took more to upset the multiple world champion in swimming in icy water. “I asked my crew to only give me hot tea at the aid stations, to warm me up and relax. »
Neither the westerly wind nor a few pains in the hip will have hindered the determination of this Normande from Lisieux, who has passed several times “into automatic swimming mode”. After the Channel, she will tackle Antarctica to complete the Ice-mile, a nautical mile in icy water, by 2024.