Tab exclusive: Student hospitalised after swimming in Cardiff floods

The Tab spoke to the fresher who was hospitalised after swimming through a flooded road in the Cathays area.

Bryn Knight, who studies accounting and finance, became ill following the stunt on Wednesday May 11th. As a result he missed his exam in Economics on the Friday morning. Bryn was driven to hospital after an emergency ambulance call on fears he had caught a serious disease. Thankfully the fresher has since returned from hospital all clear and feels better.

We spoke to the red shorts swimmer about how it went down and whether he regrets his spur of the moment decision.

Bryn was in the contaminated water for approximately 2 minutes

After finding the river which had formed under Senghenydd bridge, Bryn and his housemates immediately started discussing who would go for a swim.

“It was just something that seemed like fun, I enjoyed it at the time but it did make me horribly ill. No one was really surprised, because my housemate and I have a very strong reputation for doing stupid, reckless things.”

Two of Bryn’s housemates also dove into the water and were similarly taken to hospital. One is still suffering from the illness.

“It was very much a spur of the moment thing, but with people egging me on and my housemates already having gone in I was always going to do it.”

He went swimming on Wednesday evening at around 6pm

Bryn’s illness was so severe that he had to travel to hospital in an ambulance in the early hours of Friday morning.

“It all hit me instantly with no warning, it was seriously grim.”

The doctors took blood samples and blood pressure tests but struggled to find any evidence of a specific disease.

Bryn is now recovered

The fresher could have potentially caught so many different diseases that he never discovered exactly what his illness was. The main concerns were Weil’s disease and Cholera.

In response to whether Bryn regretted his decision, he commented: “Yes but not because I was so ill, more because it made me miss my exam, which probably means I’ll have to come back for resits and the extenuating circumstances letter cost £20.”

You can watch a video of Bryn going for a cheeky dip in the link below, note how students can be heard saying “this guy’s gonna regret it”.