Julie Bradshaw

Image: www.getset4success.co.uk

Few sporting personalities do their motivating while still performing of those, Few take part purely for charity, like Channel-crosser Julie Bradshaw.

It's likely you’ve never heard of Britain’s Dr Julie Bradshaw, MBE. If not, it’s time you did. She’s one of those rare achievers in sport who are able to show us that hope is not just for cock-eyed optimists, but always within our grasp.

Anyone as eccentric, driven and accomplished as “Mad Fish” is bound to bring innovation to sport. Bradshaw is one of those extraordinary sporting personages who do their motivating while still participating – in her case, at the very highest level. In that way, she’s much like our own Jimmy Stynes, who would’ve played football forever if it meant he’d be able to publicise his various causes.

She’s unique. She’s now nudging 50, and has been fascinated by the English Channel since she first conquered it and the Heraclean trials it threw her way, like monstrous tankers, choking oil slicks and endless schools of jellyfish (her greatest fear), at age 15. She still competes on lakes, rivers, oceans and various waterways all around the world because it’s the best way she knows to bring inspiration to people and raise money for children with cancer and other charities. She only ever swims for charity. Furthermore, she’s patently driven by a preposterous dream: that open water swimming can somehow be popular.

This cheerful and boundlessly energetic woman wants to share and popularise a pursuit that, for most people, would be the furthest thing from their minds: swimming in cold, turbulent, perilous ocean for hours, sometimes days! Even Olympic swimmers have found the job way too arduous and failed to finish. Australians might recall when Des Renford and Linda McGill were pioneers of open water swimming. The overwhelming impression we had as they limped ashore, greased up, exhausted, jellyfish-stung, was that it took a special type of person to even contemplate such a pursuit. Bradshaw’s message is: “If I can do it, you can.”

Her multiple world records are impressive, but what makes her a real “Innovator” is her ability to bring worlds together – and open water swimming is not the most attractive world for most people to think about entering, especially using the most difficult stroke of all, the butterfly.

In July 2011, she set a world first by swimming around Manhattan island using the stroke, while everyone else in the marathon struggled with the front crawl. She said at the time, “The real advantage is, because I’ll be breathing to the front, I’ll get a good look at all the sights. You can’t do that with front crawl.” The sights ... right! But we shouldn’t be sceptical – she’s likely to produce happy snaps!

She also used that stroke for 14 hours, 18 minutes to cross the English Channel and break a world record – by nine hours! – in 2002. Her world records are too numerous to mention here, and she’s still attaining them to this day. Her British Junior mark of ten hours, nine minutes for the Channel swim still stands after 34 years.

Bradshaw’s work on behalf of such an obscure and onerous pursuit has been remarkable, not only because she’s given it sparkling publicity, but because she’s used it to further even greater causes. As secretary of the Channel Swimming Association, she’s somehow managed to make one of the most daunting tasks a human being can undertake accessible – even possible. In fact, she’s turned it into a kind of therapy. She brings her interests together by not just participating in charity swims, but creating them. The Manhattan swim was for the Rainbows Children’s Hospice in Loughborough, UK.

Bradshaw is a credit not only to her sport, but to sport in general. But she transcends sport. She’s a manic achiever, with a BA in Physical Education with Sports Science and History, a MSc in PE and a Postgraduate Certificate in Education. After stints as head swimming coach in Toronto, then Melton Mowbray, she was appointed a PE lecturer at Loughborough University. In her own words, she motivates people using a variety of methods. She’s a “teacher, business motivator [her company is called www.getset4success.co.uk], sports coach, swimmer, counsellor [therapist] and coach and trainer of Neurolinguistic Programming, Time Line Therapy and hypnosis”.

But more than that, she is able to hold herself up as an extraordinary example of what a human being can achieve, and the older she gets, the more her remarkable achievements will be noticed. “I’m actually not finding swimming long distances to be a greater physical challenge as I get older. The challenges are all around finding the time to do it alongside my career. I love it though and who knows when I will stop?”

Anyone – teens with low esteem, people overcoming cancer, men and women on the wrong side of young – will be hoping this jaunty, compassionate, wonderful Pom will just keep going forever.

‒ Robert Drane