National award for Cappa swimmer

KILRUSH endurance swimmer Fionnuala Walsh (pictured) has been crowned Irish Long Distance Swimming Association Female Swimmer of the Year award for 2012. The award ceremony was held in Fermoy last weekend.

Fionnuala became the first person from Clare and 15th Irish female to successfully swim the English Channel on Tuesday, October 9, following a 15-hour and 26-minute fundraising swim from Dover to Calais in France.

All money raised from her efforts will be donated to Muscular Dystrophy Ireland and Pieta House. The Cappa woman personally funded 100% of all costs associated with her challenge.

This was Fionnuala’s second attempt at the channel having had her hopes dashed on August 8 by fog, a few hundred metres from French shores.

In August 1999 Fionnuala sent her first email inquiry to the Channel Swimming Association but it took over a decade before she would send a booking deposit to her pilot in 2010, two years in advance of October’s successful swim. Before leaving for France, she had amassed more than 1.5 million metres in training.