Edie Hu

Open-water marathon swimmer Edie Hu’s oceanic exploits are almost too numerous to mention; they include a 45km swim around Hong Kong island in 2018 – she was the first woman to do so in 42 years – swimming the English and Catalina channels, the Strait of Gibraltar and the 20 Bridges Manhattan Island circumnavigation (the latter three constituting the Triple Crown). A native of Menlo Park, California, she took up swimming as a child, and played water polo when studying at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, but became tired of the competition and structured practice. She only rediscovered her love for the water after re-locating to Hong Kong 16 years ago, where she works as an independent art advisor and appraiser, and where she also began open-water swimming. Since then, she says, “it’s taken me to many parts of the world I’d never have expected to visit, places like Tarifa in Spain or the north-west tip of Sri Lanka”. Hu has also been involved in Splash, a charity aimed at spreading swimming literacy and for which she now serves an ambassador, since 2015. On the water, her ambitions include swimming the North Channel from Scotland to Ireland, New Zealand’s Cook Strait and the Molokai Channel in Hawaii, thus – along with the Triple Crown – completing the Oceans Six. And her personal motto? “Never complain and never explain. I interpret this,” she says, “as living my life without having to explain or justify my actions to anyone else.”