This weekend the open water swimming community was shocked to hear of the death of Nick Thomas, who died in Calais after being taken out of the water only a few miles short of completing his channel swim.
I didn’t know Nick personally, although I know a number of people that did. You can read the notice from the Channel Swimming and Pilot Federation here: http://cspf.co.uk/article/111/nick-thomas
Personally this weekend I was with another community of swimmers at the BLDSA’s Windermere swim, not swimming this year, but helping out with the management of the swim. However late on Sunday evening I got an email asking if I would be interviewed on BBC radio about Nick’s death. I’m not sure how they found me – probably through the BLDSA’s Twitter page (which I run), but I wasn’t sure that I was qualified enough to speak about it. I tried to find someone I felt was more qualified – but with it being the Sunday evening of a bank holiday weekend people weren’t available.
So last night I was on the Stephen Nolan show on Radio 5 Live. I told them I hadn’t known Nick, nor had I swum the channel, so instead I talked about open water swimming in general. You can listen here (it starts at about 45 minutes in) – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07q1wfs
It wasn’t a particularly a good interview, like many non swimmers the interviewer just didn’t seem to understand the concept of open water swimming and so asked very basic questions. I hope I did ok and represented our community well enough.
I also want to offer my sincere condolences to the family and friends of Nick Thomas.
1000kmstowindermere 
You did a great job Patrick.
Thanks Simon.