AN INSPIRATIONAL athlete has praised Penketh Pool for saving him after a life-threatening illness left him in a dark place.
Chris Smith, from Great Sankey, only learned how to swim in the Penketh facility aged 46 after suffering from a spinal injury in 2001.
To mark his 50th birthday, he undertook the dangerous and gruelling feat of swimming from Alcatraz to San Francisco Bay.
With just a few years of swimming experience under his belt, Chris, 57, has placed third, second and first in his age group at the London Triathlon, the largest triathlon in the world with 13-15,000 competitors every year.
READ MORE > Council makes £33k in a month in bus lane fines
Remarkably, Chris is the only person to have completed the London Triathlon course over 10 successive years, and the only person to win it on two successive occasions.
Chris said: "This year, I was going for the third successive win, the hat-trick. Everything was going extremely well, and I’d trained on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, and my training figures were looking very good and I was very confident.
"Then something went wrong."
In early March, Chris was diagnosed with a severe form of pneumonia and was rushed into hospital on three occasions.
Chris Smith
He continued: "I had four courses of antibiotics, lots of different medications, CT scans and even had a life-threatening reaction to an intravenous infusion.
"I genuinely thought I wasn't going to make it out alive.
"During this time I was in so much pain and had lots of very dark days and thoughts."
Chris had to give up working as a sports therapist but in June, friends and work colleagues at Penketh Pool asked him to go in for a few hours and help out with some swim teaching and lifeguard duties.
From that moment on things started to turn around.
Chris said: "This little pool in the heart of Penketh became not just my mental and physical rehabilitation, but it also became part of my salvation.
"The pool that taught me to swim has also just saved my life.
"Just a few weeks ago I could barely swim four lengths of the 20 metre pool, but I am a former pupil of Penketh High School, whose badge bears the word 'perseverance', and I don’t give in easily."
Soon enough, Chris was swimming 400 metres, 800 metres and then the full mile.
He added: "I had previously swum more than 10,000 miles in Penketh Pool, but the one mile on that day meant the most to me.
"I started jogging slowly in early July and went out on my road bike a couple of times."
Chris decided for his mental wellbeing that he was going to attempt the London Triathlon during the last weekend in July.
Chris at the finish
Due to his health, he decided to take it easy at the back of the field, wave to the crowd and jog across the finish line.
He wasn't even sure if he would be able to complete the course.
Chris said: "As soon as we started my well prepared plan went out of the window, my old competitive streak took over and I was soon racing.
"Against all expectations I finished third and have never felt so good in my whole life.
"The truth is, I still have some lingering health concerns and I am not out of the woods yet but I am definitely on the way up."
Chris now works as a sports therapist with high-level athletes and works part-time teaching swimming and occasionally performing lifeguard duties at Penketh Pool.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here