Georgia Gray, a first year at New College, plans to swim 15km to raise money for the charity Reading Quest.
She will swim 600 laps of the Iffley Pool, which she has booked for 9 hours on April 30, though she commented ‘it hopefully won’t take that long!’
Gray, who was born without a right hand and with the bones in her forearm fused, chose to study at Oxford rather than compete in the 2012 Paralympic Games, and holds two national records for the New Zealand Disabled Swim Team.
She explained that the 15km swim is ‘to celebrate the fact that Reading Quest is 15 years old this year’.
Reading Quest is a local charity that provides one to one tuition for primary school children struggling with reading, with ‘an intensive six-week program of daily one-to-one teaching to focus on speaking, reading and writing”.
It particularly caters for children from underprivileged backgrounds where English is not often the first language spoken at home, making it difficult for them to do well in class.
Gray described the organization as ‘a little known charity’, but added, “it’s just awesome that such a small thing can make a fundamental change”.
She is optimistic that ‘doing a big public event will hopefully raise [Reading Quest’s] profile’ and explained, “The swim for me is just as much about raising awareness for Reading Quest as it is raising money.”
Gray added, ‘It’s extremely sad that such an educational divide can exist in a city so renowned for its academics.’
She also described the difficulties of fitting a swimming career around Oxford’s notoriously demanding work schedule. This is made only more tricky by the fact that she is currently training to take part in the World Championships next year.
It’s not only the amount of work that makes training tough for an athlete at Oxford, however. Gray told Cherwell how “this year I fractured my elbow and jaw in a post-bop accident”.
However, she retains her enthusiasm for her “amazing” sport, and is still on track for both the charity event and next year’s World Championships.
Donations can be made here: https://mydonate.bt.com/events/georgiagray/65896
