An ultramarathon swimmer was joined by a seal during her record-breaking swim across the English Channel.<br /> <br />Eva Buzo, 37, was training for an endurance swim from Italy to Albania when a friendly seal joined her on her grueling journey.<br /> <br />Eva set off from Shakespeare Beach, Dover, at 11:15pm on June 5, making her the first woman to ever swim the channel this early in the year.<br /> <br />Eva was roughly four hours her journey, fighting against the biting 13-degree water, when a seal swam directly underneath her and popped its head up in front of her.<br /> <br />Eva nicknamed the seal Trudy after Trudy Ederle who, in 1926, was the first woman to swim the English Channel.<br /> <br />Eva, a barrister and executive director at Victim Advocates International, said: "When Trudy Ederle swam from New York to New Jersey for the first time, a seal joined her for that as well.<br /> <br />"I'm a pretty cynical person and don't often anthropomorphise animals, but it was a really special moment."<br /> <br />Eva, who is originally from Sydney, Australia, has been swimming since childhood and reached a high level at a young age, but stopped competitive swimming when she was a teenager.<br /> <br />She picked it up again about a four years ago in Australia and has been beating her own records ever since.<br /> <br />The last two years, she has been living between Sydney and London for the past two years so she can swim all year round.<br /> <br />Eva is still acclimatizing to chilly English waters and almost abandoned the Channel crossing.<br /> <br />She said: "I almost pulled out but I kept telling myself that I just needed to make it to dawn.<br /> <br />"The sun was due to come up at around four in the morning and I knew after that the rest of the swim would be easier.<br /> <br />"But I was still really struggling, and then, in the final hour before dawn broke, the seal appeared.<br /> <br />"It looked quite small, so could have been a baby, and she was so friendly.<br /> <br />"It was swimming very closely to me and would make eye contact with me as well as come up behind me and nuzzle my toes."<br /> <br />The seal swam alongside Eva - doing roly-polies and touching her toes - for nearly an hour before it eventually swam off.<br /> <br />Eva continued her journey and reached Cap Gris-Nez in France on June 6 at 10:06am - completing an 10-hour-and-49 minute swim.<br /> <br />Eva is now eight weeks away from her 90km endurance swim from Italy to Albania across the Adriatic Sea.<br /> <br />It's the second time she attempts the swim after having to pull out 10km from the end after 28 hours of swimming.<br /> <br />Eva said: "I'm excited to give this swim another go.<br /> <br />"I think ultramarathon endurance swimming goes really under the radar as a sport where women come on top.<br /> <br />"The top seven athletes in the field are women.<br /> <br />"So it's not a sport where the women are just equal to men, we're far outperforming them."
