Tyneside man completes swimming marathon in New York

Tony Rutter celebrated with a Newcastle United flag when he completed the Manhattan challenge

A charity fundraiser has completed a hat-trick of marathon swimming challenges with his latest effort through New York's busy waterways.

Tony Rutter, from Newcastle, swam 28.5 miles (45.8km) around Manhattan Island at the weekend - the final leg of the so-called open water Triple Crown.

In the last nine years, he swam across the English Channel and the Catalina Channel before circumnavigating the New York borough.

He now plans to retire "for a while".

Mr Rutter said: "It's great to have done it after so long. I did my English Channel swim in 2014 and since then I've been doing other swims but it just takes up so much of your life, to do all the training camps and being away at weekends swimming.

"So to get it all done and dusted is a big relief."

In 2022 he completed the Catalina Chanel swim with Graham Walton

Each one of the swimming challenges has presented its own difficulties.

The 20.5 mile (33km) English Channel swim saw him face strong currents and cold temperatures, while the Catalina Channel - stretching 21 miles (32.5km) between Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles - came with prevailing winds, meaning he had to "break the back" of his evening swim before they picked up.

The Manhattan challenge took him nine hours and 27 minutes to complete.

"You've got three busy rivers with boat traffic and mine was an evening swim so I started at 18:00 local time and finished at 03:00 so staying awake and being mentally alert was quite a challenge, along with a tide change.

"We had a bit of an altercation with a tanker driver asking us to move out of his way in the Hudson River. He said he couldn't think of 'anything more stupid than swimming the Hudson in the middle of the night' but it was all part of the experience," added Mr Rutter.

He now plans to take a break from swimming challenges "for a couple of years".

Mr Rutter said he realised how much effort he had put into it afterwards - when he "got into a taxi and fell asleep".

He has raised money for charity from his aquatic challenges, with his latest going to help St Oswald's Hospice in Gosforth.

Tony Rutter completed the 28.5mile (45.8km) swim at the weekend