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| UPDATED
EVERY FRIDAY
Last Update:
Friday 27th May, 2005 |
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| All
content © New Journal Enterprises, 2005. |
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| Incredible Lynne can swim in the Antarctic |
In from the cold: (Back row, from left) Jean Harper,
June Stern, Lynne Cox, Jane Shallice, Jane Gillie and
Corina Marlowe. Front row: Sally Donati, Joanna Goldworthy
and Olga Way |
Super swimmer Lynne Cox made a splash when she visited
Hampstead Heath Ladies Pond regulars, writes Dan Carrier~
Swimming To Antarctica by Lynne Cox.
Weidenfeld and Nicholson £18.99.
THE waters in the Hampstead Heath Ladies Pond can take some
getting used to – even if you are marathon sea swimmer
Lynne Cox.
The Californian broke the world record for crossing the English
Channel when she was 15 and swam the Bering Straits between
Alaska and Russia in the 1980s in an attempt foster peace
between the Superpowers.
She met members of the Ladies Pond swimming club on Thursday
to congratulate them on their fight to keep the ponds open
– and promote her autobiography.
It tells the story of how she became obsessed with swimming
and has spent her life setting herself near impossible waterborne
tasks. Lynne, 48, said: “Swimming in fresh water is
a lovely thing to do in a city. Other swimmers will know what
I mean when I talk about the peacefulness you find as you
cut through the water.
“The Ladies Pond is beautiful first thing in the morning.
The water is sweet and clean, there were geese, ducks, and
a white swan swimming in the pond while I swam. I could hear
many of the ladies talking as they swam head up, breaststroke
– it was a social experience too. Mothers go with their
daughters, they link the generations - what a wonderful tradition.”
Lynne’s achievements include being the first woman to
swim between the north and south islands of New Zealand and
she also swam for one mile along the shores of Antarctica.
But she said the water temperature – currently sitting
at 56 fahrenheit – made her 7am dip on the Heath all
the more invigorating.
She said: “I have to admit, the water felt cold. I’ve
been travelling for two years so I haven’t been able
to train as much, and my ability to tolerate cold water has
diminished considerably. I was amazed to find that many swim
through the winter.”
Lynne’s inner strength is on every page of her autobiography.
It brings the reader into the world of an athlete whose setting
for her sport is life threatening as well as physically demanding,
and through her work she became a guinea pig for scientists
studying hypothermia.
She writes of being in an unheated pool as an eight-year-old
and being told to swim further by her coach while her school
friends complained. But not for Lynne. She writes: “Getting
out of the water was the last thing I wanted to do.”
Her summers were spent on the shores of a Maine lake called
Snow Pond – an apt place to become familiar with the
water in view of what she was to achieve later. She joined
a group of ocean swimmers when she was in her teens, and found
it more enjoyable than swimming in lanes. This lead her to
join a group who were going to swim across the Catalina Channel
off the Californian coast, a dangerous attempt that would
take all night. Lynne completed it and two years later she
travelled to England with her mother to swim the English Channel.
She did it in world record time.
Lynne’s story then takes us through some of the most
treacherous stretches of water in the world: she swam along
the Magellan Straits off the tip of South America, and the
Cape of Good Hope, where a giant shark swam towards her, mouth
gaping, and was about to have dinner when some one in her
support boat shot it.
She even swam for a mile along the coast of Antarctica in
waters that are 33 degrees Fahrenheit, which was possible,
she explains, because of her unique physiology.
Lynne’s body fat ratio was perfect for a swimmer –
making her buoyant and well insulated.
The second reason for her ability to stand extreme cold is
her inner core temperature has been carefully trained: when
you get cold, heat normally leaches out to your extremities
to warm up the muscles – but Lynne’s body had
learnt to keep her vital organs warm, allowing her to stay
alive in water that would kill most humans.
But it is all building up to what she believes is the ultimate
challenge: to a swim across the Bering straits from an island
under American jurisdiction to another that is on Russian
soil.
It was a plan that took ten years to come to fruition. The
Soviets ignored her, the Americans thought it was impossible,
but her single mindedness meant she finally got permission,
and achieved a test of will power and body strength that many
thought was impossible.
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