Christine Bleakley completes charity Channel challenge
Christine Bleakley completes charity Channel challenge
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Friday, 12, Mar 2010 11:12
By Lewis Bazley.
TV presenter Christine Bleakley has successfully water-skied across the English Channel as part of a charity effort for Sport Relief.
The One Show host crossed the 21-mile body of water in one hour and 40 minutes, around half an hour slower than her targeted time.
"I can't believe I've actually done it!" Bleakley commented. "It took me 100 minutes to waterski the Channel and I only fell in eight times.
"It was really tough though the water was freezing and having to get up after every fall was exhausting. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me along the way, it really kept me going out there.
"The work Sport Relief does helps changes lives both in the UK and the world's poorest countries and I've seen firsthand the difference it can make so please donate what you can by visiting www.sportrelief.com/christine."
Thirty-one-year-old Bleakley has raised thousands of pounds for Sport Relief through the water-ski challenge, highlights of which will be shown on The One Show on Friday evening.
A statement from Sport Relief organisers after Bleakley's challenge said: "The presenter of the BBC's One Show at last set off from Dover first thing this morning at 07.46AM having been delayed on both Wednesday and Thursday due to treacherous gale force winds.
"She water skied-the 22 mile stretch of choppy water in an incredible 100 minutes and arrived on the shore of France exhausted, yet elated, at 09.26AM."
Bleakley chose to undertake the "crazy" Channel crossing for the charity after a visit to East Africa in 2009.
"I went to Uganda where I met Hajjara, a teenage girl carrying the weight of the world on her young shoulders," she explained.
"After losing her parents to Aids, she's been left all alone to care for her younger siblings."
Bleakley's Channel crossing was part of several celebrity initiatives for Sport Relief, including Eddie Izzard's completion of 43 marathons in 51 days and David Walliams, Fearne Cotton and Davina McCall's cycle from John O'Groats in Scotland to Land's End in Cornwall.