Becoming a Channel swimmer: embodiment and identity in an extreme sporting culture

<p>Abstract copyright data collection owner.</p>English Channel swimming is an extreme sporting culture. It is not possible to complete the swim successfully without rigorous training, often over several years; it is a body project which requires the purposeful development of a wide range of embodied techniques, knowledges and practices, including efficient stroke technique, endurance, acclimatisation to cold water, in-water nutrition and psychological strategies for coping with the sensory deprivations and physical discomforts of marathon swimming. Drawing on auto-ethnographic data on the researcher's own training, and the ethnographic study of the community and wider context within which training takes place, this research aims to explore the development of the techniques, knowledges and practices necessary to the process of becoming a Channel swimmer; the body pedagogics involved in the acquisition, embodiment and transfer of those techniques; and the identity production at work in those processes. This out-of-the-ordinary body project offers a novel perspective from which to interrogate contemporary thinking and policy in relation to sport and physical activity, and the counter-normative aspects of the training process (for example, the purposeful acquisition and maintenance of body fat) provide an opportunity to think differently, and potentially more inclusively, about what constitutes a sporting body in contemporary society