在一次电击事故中失去四肢的法国42岁男子菲利普?克鲁瓦松日前成功横渡英吉利海峡，用时仅13.5小时，比之前预想的24小时快了很多。克鲁瓦松于当地时间周六早晨8点之前在英国南部的福克斯通下海，靠残存的上臂保持身体平衡，在带有脚蹼的特制假肢帮助下游泳，当晚9点半以前便抵达33公里外的法国维桑附近海岸。1994年，克鲁瓦松在屋顶搬动电视天线时不幸触电，被一条2万伏的高压电线击中，医生随后不得已而截断了他的四肢。住院期间，他曾经看过一部有关横渡海峡的电视纪录片，由此萌生了横渡英吉利海峡的念头。成功横渡后，克鲁瓦松表示自己是“世上最幸福的人”，并希望通过自己的举动来鼓励“那些认为生活就是受苦”的人们。他下一个想要挑战的目标将是从欧洲游到非洲。
A French father-of-two who swam across the Channel 16 years after losing all his limbs in an electrical accident said Sunday that he was "the happiest man alive."Philippe Croizon, a 42-year-old former metalworker, said he had performed his feat to inspire all those "who think life is nothing but suffering."He set off from Folkestone in southern England just before 8:00 am on Saturday, and arrived on the French coast near Wissant just before 9:30 pm, propelled by his specially designed flipper-shaped prosthetic legs.
Steadying himself with the stumps of his arms, Croizon kept up a constant speed in good weather and was accompanied by wild dolphins for part of the 33-kilometre (20-mile) crossing, his support team said.
"For a while, I didn't realise what I'd done. It was only that night, when I went to bed, that suddenly I burst out laughing, and told myself, 'You did it!'," he told AFP by telephone from his home in northern France.
In 1994 Croizon was hit by a 20,000-volt charge as he attempted to remove a television aerial from a house roof and an arc of current surged through him from a nearby powerline.
"I was on my hospital bed, they'd just finished cutting off my last leg. You can imagine how that felt. And then I saw a television documentary on a female swimmer who crossed the Channel," he explained.
"There and then, I asked myself: 'Why not me one day?'," he said.
Croizon trained for two years and last month completed a 12-hour swim between the ports of Noirmoutier and Pornic on France's Atlantic coast, but his final Channel crossing was much faster than he had anticipated.
"At one point I told myself, 'Woah, slow down, you'll never get there if you try to keep up this speed'. I wanted to slow down, but I couldn't. The motor was running," he said, adding that he had expected to be at sea for 24 hours.
"It was huge. I was in the zone. I was inside my head. I didn't want to disappoint anyone," he said, declaring that his next long-distance challenge will be to swim between Europe and Africa. |