Pál Joensen

Pál Joensen is a Faroese swimmer who specialises in distance freestyle. Born on 10 December 1990 in Vágur on the island of Suðuroy, he trained at home with the Suðuroy Swimming Club (Susvim) and later moved to Denmark, where he swam for Aalborg Svømmeklub. Because the Faroe Islands have no separate Olympic body, he represented Denmark at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, swimming the 400 metre freestyle, the 1500 metre freestyle and the 4 x 200 metre freestyle relay. His bronze medal in the 1500 metre freestyle at the 2012 FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) in Istanbul was the first medal a Faroese swimmer had won at a world aquatics championship. He has also won European Championship medals and many Faroese national records, and in 2015 the first 50 metre pool in the Faroe Islands, Páls Høll, was named after him.