Derby resident Margaret Rivard added to her list of remarkable feats

16-year-old Derby resident Margaret Rivard added to her list of remarkable feats, completing a grueling open-water swim across the English Channel on Wednesday. Taking the plunge from the beach on the English side and finishing on the French side, Rivard swam freestyle across 20.5 miles in 66-degree water and finished in 13 hours, 37 minutes. With tides, currents, wind and other factors, Rivard’s tracker reported her swim at 33.4 miles. Rivard, a junior at Kearsarge High School in Sutton, N.H. splits time living in Derby and Springfield, N.H. In finishing the England Channel swim, Rivard joined the prestigious Triple Crown club of open-water swimming, traversing three historically important swims in the Manhattan Island Marathon, the Catalina Channel and the English Channel. She is among fewer than 300 people in the country to accomplish the feat. Rivard is also the youngest swimmer to complete the Triple Crown, according to the Channel Swimming Association. Rivard follows in the footsteps of her sister, 19 year old Vera, who finished the Triple Crown swim as a 17-year-old. Margaret is already an accomplished open-water swimmer — inducted into the Vermont Open Water Swimming Hall of Fame in its Class of 2022. She finished her first open-water swim at the quarter-mile Kingdom Swim at age 7, and jaunts across lakes in the Northeast Kingdom and elsewhere.  At 10, she became the youngest swimmer to complete the 10-mile course at Kingdom Swim. At 11, she was the youngest swimmer to double cross Lake Willoughby.