61. Lynne Cox: Swimming For Peace

Towards the end of the March 3, 1975 issue of Sports Illustrated a reader wrote in on the exploits of a little known swimmer who had appeared in two issues of SI the previous month. The woman wrote, "Thank you for a beautifully written piece on an incredible woman. Lynne Cox. How refreshing it is to read a story written by a man (Sam Moses) about a woman that does not go on about the color of her hair or how she looked in her bathing suit." What was noticeable is that Miss Cox was wearing a bathing suit, but not a wetsuit... despite the obvious need for one as she was a long distance swimmer who sometimes swam in temps that were below freezing. When Lynne was 14, she and three other teammates swam the 31 miles it takes to cross the Catalina Island Channel... and that the beginning of a life like no other. She would go on to swim the English Channel, as well as a mile in 26 degree water in Antartica. Yes, you read that correctly... she swam for a mile in just bathing suit in below freezing temps. But her most famous swim was in 1987 when she crossed the Bering Strait... it took her over 2 hours to go from Little Diomede in Alaska to Big Diomede in the USSR in waters that were 38 degrees. She was trying to raise attention to how close the two Superpowers were in proximity and to help bring an end to the Cold War. President's Reagan and Gorbachev both toasted her on her amazing accomplishment. Cox is now 68 years old, and tells us how Russian doctors were prepared to help her immediately once she came ashore in the Soviet Union and how cardiac arrest was a real possibility. How the people of the islands were actually families who hadn't been able to communicate with each other in almost 50 years and began to rejoice and sing once she brought them together! She recalls a swim where she thought a shark might be in the water, but instead it was a pod of dolphins guiding her across the Cook Strait in New Zealand. She tells amazing stories because she has amazing stories to tell... and she does it on this weeks Past Our Prime podcast. You won't believe it unless you hear it. Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices