Gráinne Moss (née Gunn, 56, Irish, MSF bio here) was announced to be inducted in the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame, Class of 2027, as an Honor Swimmer.

A Triple Crowner, she completed the Oceans Seven and has been marathon swimming since her teenage years. She was the first Irish woman to swim the English Channel in 1987 at the age of 17, and then become a 7-time Irish marathon swimming champion. She later completed the Oceans Seven in 2026.

Sometimes, she takes her time – and sometimes she is extremely efficient with her time. To complete the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming, she completed 20 Bridges Swim – and then 8 days later she completed the Catalina Channel. With the completion of these two swims in over a week’s time, Moss achieved her third Triple Crown of Marathon Swimming: the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming, the Irish Triple Crown, and the New Zealand Triple Crown.

Her road to the Oceans Seven was eventful.  It took 39 years between her first completion of the English Channel and her last completion of the Tsugaru Channel. Across the 45 km Molokai Channel, she suffered box jellyfish stings four hours from the Oahu, but she swam along in pain on to finish in 15 hours 7 minutes. In the 35 km North Channel from Northern Ireland to Scotland in 13 hours 33 minutes, the average water temperature she faced was 12.8°C – on her third attempt in 2022. Her previous attempts were in 1996 and 1997. She has accompanied a number of other swimmers across the North Channel and was the support swimmer for Alison Streeter, MBE when she became the first woman to swim the North Channel in 1989. Her first Tsugaru Channel attempt was stopped after 11 hours 52 minutes in 15°C water, the year before she completed the crossing.

Moss was the first swimmer from Ireland to complete a crossing of the 23 km Cook Strait in New Zealand in 2001 at the age of 31. Philip Rush said that she was the only swimmer in Oceans Seven history to be pulled from the water due to a circling shark – but she decided to get back into the ocean to complete the crossing in 12 hours 25 minutes. It is one thing to get out due to a shark encounter; it is quite another to jump back in the strait.

Oceans Seven Journey

• August 1987: 33.5 km crossing of the English Channel from England to France in 11 hours 52 minutes at the age of 17
• March 2001: 23 km crossing of the Cook Strait from North Island to South Island in New Zealand in 12 hours 25 minutes at the age of 31
• July 2022: 35 km crossing of the North Channel from Northern Ireland to Scotland in 13 hours 33 minutes at the age of 52
• May 2023: 45 km crossing of the Molokai Channel from Molokai Island to Oahu in Hawaii in 15 hours 7 minutes at the age of 53
• July 2023: 32.3 km crossing of the Catalina Channel from Santa Catalina Island to Palos Verdes Peninsula in California in 11 hours 22 minutes at the age of 53
• May 2024: 14.4 km crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain to Morocco in 4 hours 23 minutes at the age of 54
• June 2026: 19.5 km crossing of the Tsugaru Channel in northern Japan in 12 hours and 29 minutes at the age of 56

@ 2026 Daily News of Open Water Swimming

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