Going the distance: resilience lessons from swim champion

“The [US team’s] carpet was thicker than my bedroll,” she recalls. “Yet one of them declared they were ‘just not feeling it’. My mother was having apoplexy!”

None of the American swimmers finished the race. Moss did. That experience taught her one of her earliest lessons about resilience: appearances and resources do not guarantee success. Sometimes grit matters more.

A year later she became the first Irish woman to swim the English Channel.

Over the following decades, Moss built an extraordinary marathon swimming career, completing some of the world's most demanding endurance swims, including the Catalina Channel, Molokaʻi Channel, North Channel, Strait of Gibraltar and Around Manhattan. She has also completed several iconic New Zealand swims, including Foveaux Strait.

Yet even with those achievements behind her, Moss repeatedly found herself tested by brutal conditions. During one attempt to swim the North Channel she endured hours of jellyfish stings, vomiting, exhaustion and pain severe enough to leave her shoulders bleeding and her body shutting down. Eventually she was forced to stop.

For many people, failure on that scale would become defining. Moss chose to see it differently.

“Failure is in the eye of the beholder,” she says.

Instead of retreating, she analysed what went wrong, adapted and returned stronger. That mindset, the ability to learn from setbacks without being destroyed by them, is central to how she views leadership and business.

From the briny to business

In her experience, resilient organisations operate much the same way as successful endurance athletes, she says. They understand their strengths, rely on trusted relationships and stay calm when conditions change unexpectedly.

“Relationships are great for resilience,” Moss says. “They help you solve problems and find faster ways from A to B.”

That lesson became particularly clear during a Cook Strait swim attempt in Wellington. After eight hours in the water, a shark circled her. Under marathon swimming rules, swimmers can briefly be placed in a support boat provided it is not moving forward. Seven minutes later, Moss made the decision to get back into the water and complete the swim.

She is the only swimmer in Cook Strait to have had a shark sighting and luckily its the only shark she has encountered while swimming. There have been many dolphins and birds, however, with some sightings proving “incredibly emotional and spiritual”, moving her to tears.

For Moss, resilience is rarely a solo act. It depends on connection, trust and people who support you when you cannot see the finish line yourself.

Even after raising four children and balancing family life with work, Moss continued taking on extraordinary challenges. In 2022, decades after an earlier failed attempt, she returned to the North Channel and completed the swim in more than 13 hours through water temperatures hovering around 12°C. Friends joined her support boat, reinforcing another lesson she values deeply: resilience grows through community. “The support and love you get is fantastic,” she said.

Borrowing a line from American travel writer Tim Cahill, Moss said “the journey in business is measured in friends, not miles”, because leadership and resilience are built through relationships and shared experience rather than individual achievement alone.

Leadership, she believes, also depends on understanding your unique value.

“If you don't know the one or two things you do that nobody else can do, then you're not being an effective leader in your business,” she said.

Now pursuing the final swim in the famed Oceans Seven marathon swimming challenge, Moss continues to test herself physically and mentally while raising money for charity. In 2002, she swam the lengths of seven Rotorua lakes in seven days for charity, and has raised more than $55,000 for the Kenzie’s Gift – a charity that provides support to tamariki who have experience severe loss and grief. (She also asked ONZ to make a donation to Kenzie’s Gift in lieu of her speaking to both the ONZ AGM and ONZ Business Leaders Forum, with ONZ donating $2000).

Asked where courage comes from, her answer is simple. “You have to make an emotional commitment,” she says. “If you haven't got that, you can't get up early, stop drinking and do the hard work.”

Even during the longest swims, Moss said success comes from focusing on manageable moments rather than the enormity of the challenge ahead. That emotional commitment may be the clearest definition of resilience Moss offers. Because in the end, resilience is not about never failing. It is about being willing to dive back in.

Gráinne Moss’ resilience tips

• If at first you don’t succeed… be the best you can be.
• Trust your team and take risks.
• Focus on one stroke at a time.
• Motivation and drive overcome disadvantage.
• Be ready for opportunity.
• Embrace failure.
• Don’t wait for the perfect day.
• Don’t be afraid of the dark.
• Get the right support.
• You never know where passion and a good cause will take you.