Swimmer forced to Channel his energy into a new route

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

By Nick Tarver

AN AMERICAN who raised thousands of pounds to help buy a toddler a new set of legs had to find a way round the bad weather in his bid to swim the English Channel.

Student Kyle Taylor, 24, from California, has so far raised more than £5,000 for three-year-old Harvey Parry, from Edmonton.

At 15 months old, Harvey, from Northern Avenue, contracted meningitis, which resulted in him having both his legs and three and a half fingers on his right hand amputated.

His parents, Carol and Jonathan, were forced to raise money to buy state-of-the art prothestic limbs from America after all those offered by the NHS proved too painful to use.

Kyle, who is studying at the London School of Economics on a Rotary Club scholarship, first heard about Harvey’s plight when
meeting members from the Edmonton club and he decided to help by swimming the Channel.

However, despite his dreams being thwarted due to high winds, he did complete a 25-mile marathon across Dover harbour, where he had trained for his epic swim.
“As many Channel swim regulars have said, this whole experience can be life-changing, and it has been for me as well,” he said. “I’ve learned so much about myself and about my motivations. Somewhere along the way it stopped being about getting to France for me and started being about sharing this journey with everyone in my life, beating the cold water and doing all I could to help Harvey run.

“I’m on cloud nine at the moment and totally satisfied with how it went, and that’s all I wanted – to beat my fears and help Harvey. I hope I did that, and inspired a few folks along the way.”

---

Be the first to comment using the form below.

Submit your comment below :
Your Name (required) :

Your Email*(required) :

Your Location (required) :

Your Comment (required) :

Maximum Number of characters for this text box is 400.

You have 400 characters remaining for your description...

I agree to the terms and conditions and comment rules (required) :

The North London Press may not publish all comments.
Your comments may be published on any Tindle Newspaper Ltd. media.
*Your email address will not be displayed.

Enter the code as it is shown below (required):