Swimmingpod Stanley Ulijaszek

Level water means equal rights. In the case of Ian Thwaites and the charity Level Water, this is right to water, which swimming is a gateway to. He set up this charity with the mission of giving children with disabilities the opportunity to learn to swim, and by extension, empowers them to take part in a range of water-based activities that swimming opens the gate to. From physical development to social and emotional confidence, swimming is a vehicle to change the lives of children supported by Level Water for the better. Level Water has lots of events, which through swimming, raise funds, build community and build relationships. This powerful synergy raises the tide for everyone - the children, the institutions
associated with swimming and disabilities, and the swimmers themselves.

 

Ramin Cyrus has swum a channel relay, the Thames Marathon at Henley and other big swims, all great achievements. Powerful achievements, given that he is visually impaired. While for most open water swimmers,
sighting is a matter of looking up, to work out where they are and to set their course, Ramin Cyrus sights without sight, with the help of great friends in the water, Paul Daniels and Anthony Wood, he is having the swimming time of his life. In this podcast, recorded at the Lido café in London’s Hyde Park, we discuss his swimming achievements, and what it is like to be a swimmer with
visual impairment. We discuss what needs to be in place to undertake such big swims with no sight, how he navigates the water, and how he recruits all his senses to undertake the most sensorial of sports.

Vera Prokopieva and Annie Liddle were undergraduate students at the University of Oxford. They both took up wild swimming together while at Oxford. Annie grew up on a farm in Hampshire while Vera grew up in Bulgaria. Both had a love of swimming before coming to Oxford, and both have taken their love of swimming with them. In this podcast we discuss the value that open water and winter swimming bring to brain work and to everyday student life.  

Paul Atherton is a filmmaker and Londoner. He produced and directed The Ballet of Change, four short films that were projected onto London landmarks, most famously Piccadilly Circus in 2007. His video-diary Our London Lives is in the permanent collection of the Museum of London. He took up outdoor swimming at the Serpentine Swimming Club, London, in the Summer of 2023, barely being able to swim 50 meters. Just a couple of months later, he completed a mile and a meter in the race by that name, at that club. In this podcast, over breakfast at the Serpentine Lido Café, we discuss swimming, building achievements from a modest baseline, and how swimming allows the mental space for creativity.  

Karen Throsby is a swimmer and a sociologist. She is passionate about marathon swimming, and her CV of international distance swims is truly outstanding, taking in the Catalina Channel and Twenty Bridges Swim around Manhatten, as well as the English Channel. In 2008, as she started training for her English Channel solo swim, she took this as a unique opportunity to bring together her combined research and
swimming interests. She wrote a very scholarly book called ‘Immersion: Marathon Swimming, Embodiment and Identity’, which takes the lid off
of the identity and body-shaping process of becoming a marathon swimmer. In this podcast, we talk about what it takes to make a marathon swimmer, through the lens of her own Channel swimming experience.

Access is an important issue everywhere. People of all creeds and backgrounds swim. Georgie Milner is a life-long swimmer and is very keen to improve the inclusivity of sport settings. She graduated in Human Sciences from the University of Oxford in 2022, where she completed her dissertation on the intersection of swimming and social exclusion, alongside working on the Oxford University Sports Council as Inclusion and Access Officer. As well as water and inclusion for swimming as sport, she is passionate about refugee rights and water safety. In this podcast, recorded in August 2022, we talk about Georgie’s passion for swimming in both the pool and in open water, about inclusion, about her dissertation, and much more.