This Paratriathlete Became the First Blind Woman to Swim the English Channel

Left arm, right arm, breathe. Kick, kick, kick.
Left arm, right arm, breathe. Kick, kick, kick.

The repetitive, rhythmic motion of swimming comes as naturally to Melanie Barratt as breathing. Whether gliding through the narrow lanes of an indoor pool or cutting across a vast ocean, she slices through the water with strong, efficient strokes and smooth form. For Barratt, swimming feels almost effortless – like she could do it with her eyes closed.

In a way, she does. Barratt is legally blind. Born with a condition called congenital toxoplasmosis, she’s blind in her left eye and has severely limited vision in her right. When she enters the water, hops on a bike, or goes for a run, the 49-year-old mother of two from the U.K. sees little more than blurred shapes and colors.

Yet that hasn’t stopped her from competing at an elite level – in cycling, triathlon, and, most recently, by becoming the first blind woman to swim across the English Channel.

A triathlon transformation

Barratt’s time in triathlon was relatively brief – she competed in the London Triathlon and later in the Paratriathlon World Championships in Vancouver – but it was transformative. It introduced her to something more lasting: a profound connection to open-water swimming and the independence it offered.

It was during her triathlon days when Barratt first ventured into open water, something she once thought impossible. Having grown up swimming in pools – and earning two golds, two silvers, and a bronze at the Atlanta and Sydney Paralympic Games – she was always comfortable in a pool. But open water presented new challenges. In triathlon, Barratt swam tethered to a guide at the knee. But the guide couldn’t match her pace.

“When you’re swimming side-by-side, your pace has to match exactly. If you’re faster, you have to slow down, and that meant I was often getting cold,” she says. “I loved being outside, surrounded by nature and movement. The sensations of open water are so different from a pool. But it was frustrating because I couldn’t swim to my full potential.”

After stepping away from sport to have her second son, Barratt couldn’t stay away for long – and she couldn’t shake the idea of returning to open water. Maybe, she thought, she could even do something wild, like swim the English Channel. Still unable to find a suitable guide, she decided to try it independently.

Swimming solo (with a tech assist)

Her initial solution was to have her husband, Richard, guide her from a kayak. It worked well enough for events like a lake 10K and the Thames Marathon, a swim between the towns of Henley and Marlow. But there was still one big problem: She couldn’t hear him.

“I could pick up a few words when I turned to breathe, but I couldn’t hear him, and he was unable to give me any directions,” she says. “If I lost sight of him, I was just on my own.”

Determined to find a better way, Barratt did some digging. That’s when she discovered a bone-conduction radio system that slips inside a swim cap and allows a guide or coach to speak directly to the swimmer in real time.

“I found it through a Facebook ad,” she laughs. “Facebook knew I was swimming a lot!”

The system changed everything. Using clock-face directions – “1 o’clock,” “11 o’clock”- Barratt could now follow complex courses independently. Her guide could alert her to feed stations, obstacles like wood or jellyfish, and even offer encouragement when she needed it most.

Swimming the English Channel

With that breakthrough, Barratt set her sights on the English Channel: 21 miles of cold, unpredictable water, without a wetsuit. She trained relentlessly – taking daily cold dips in a whiskey barrel in her backyard to build a tolerance for the cold, building endurance with seven-hour swims, and traveling some 180 miles from her home in Leamington Spa to Dover to train in the sea.

Finally, in August 2024, Barratt got the go-ahead for her Channel attempt. Under calm skies, she dove in, quickly settling into her familiar rhythm. Left arm, right arm, breathe. Kick, kick, kick. Her support crew was mostly silent, at her request, offering only quiet directional cues through her headset.

Midway through, nausea and exhaustion nearly forced her to stop.

“I kept telling myself, ‘You’ve got perfect conditions. You have to keep going.’” Eventually, bananas and canned peaches settled her stomach, and she pushed on.

“It was just one stroke after another – and sheer determination,” she recalls. In the final hours, her crew began encouraging her, the messages from friends and family filling her ears and lifting her spirits as she closed in on the French shore.

When Barratt finally reached the shoreline of Cap Gris-Nez after 12 hours and 21 minutes of swimming, the enormity of what she had done overwhelmed her.

“It’s almost like I dreamt it. I still can’t quite get my head around it,” she says. “Throughout my life, whether it’s in swimming or triathlon, I’ve always chased the next hurdle. But now I’ve achieved my lifelong dream – one I thought may not be possible. I hope it shows other blind or disabled people that what seems impossible might just be within reach.”