For one of our final year University assignments, my great friend Thomas Camenzuli and I were tasked with creating a simple documentary about any basic story of our choosing. But simple and basic aren’t really part of our lexicon. If we were going to give someone a voice, we thought that person should have something extraordinary to tell.

In our search, we were looking for people who were at opposite sides of the age spectrum: either someone who was too young to be succeeding, or much too old. In any case, the person had to lead an inspirational life, one with purpose, drive and initiative.

Then, from the randomest Google search, we found this headline: “11-year-old swims across Gozo channel”. We started reading the article… and found out the 7km swim’s purpose was (in his own words) “to raise awareness about the plastic waste that’s in our sea”, and to collect funds for an environmental NGO.

We decided to give this ‘Liam Daly’ guy a search on Facebook. On his profile we couldn’t find anything but consecutive gold after gold medal in triathlon competitions all across Europe.

Not much was needed to convince us any further. We’d found him.

As the project’s director and editor, it was a great privilege to be able to document Liam’s talent from such an early age. By my estimation, in a few years’ time Liam Daly’s name will require no introduction. But in the off-chance that such an introduction is requested, perhaps this documentary might help.