About Dale

I spent five years in the Royal Marines. The training is designed to make you quit, and the job only starts once you have proved you will not. The Corps gave me a baseline I have traded on ever since: cold, wet and hungry is uncomfortable, not an emergency.

Two tours of Afghanistan. I will not dress that up into a story for a website. What I took from it is perspective. Very little in civilian life has felt genuinely high-stakes since, which is mostly a gift and occasionally a problem.

After the Corps I fought MMA professionally. Fighting is honest work. You find out exactly how good you are, in public, in front of everyone you know. I learned to prepare properly, to take a beating without folding, and to respect anyone who steps in knowing they might lose.

Then I went the other way and studied the body instead of hitting it. A Masters in Osteopathy, passed with distinction. I practised for years and treated everyone from desk workers to fighters.

I don't practise any more, but the training never leaves you. I founded Hardiman Performance, a pain and injury clinic in Luton, and its team now handles my own rehab for this swim. I am told I am a demanding patient.

Somewhere between the cage and the clinic I became an endurance athlete. Ironman, then ultra distance. Long events suit me: they are less about talent and more about the willingness to keep moving when everything says stop. That is the engine the Channel needs. 2025 taught me the engine is not enough on its own.

These days I build and run businesses. A supplement company. The clinic. A few other things. I keep the corporate detail off this site on purpose, because this site is about one thing.

In autumn 2025 I swam out of Dover heading for France. Four hours later I was vomiting in open water with my core temperature dropping. I made the call and got out. 14 miles still to go. I had given it six months of preparation at an hour a day, from a standing start as a novice swimmer, and leaned on the CV above for the rest. The Channel does not care about your CV.

So this time it gets the full year. Swimming, cold water and nutrition, built from scratch, written down every Friday and filmed every week. On 20 July 2027 the window opens, and I go back.