Bart rides the tide

September 1, 2008 in General, News

Bart after Lee swimFifty years ago Fr Bart Kiely SJ, now professor of psychology at the Gregorian University, won the Lee swim as a 16-year-old. It is a different race now, 1700 metres downstream through the middle of Cork, helped by a turning tide. This year Bart set his sights on breaking 60 minutes. Scorning a wet suit (that would have put him into a different, sissy category) and braving hypothermia, he has just repeated the swim, and front-crawled the distance in 55 minutes, twenty minutes better than in 2007. Beside the water he bumped into a rival swimmer from his youth, Mary Wylie, now a grandmother. She was the fastest girl in Munster when Bart was the fastest boy. Bart would not confirm that he is organising a swimming race down the Tiber for the Prefects of Vatican Congregations.