Lynne Cox (born 1957) is an American long-distance open-water swimmer and writer. In 1971 she completed the first crossing of the Catalina Island Channel, in California, and twice held the record for the fastest crossing (men or women) of the English Channel (1972 and 1973). In 1975, Cox became the first woman to swim the 10°C (50°F), 16 km (10 mi) Cook Strait in New Zealand. In 1976, she was the first person to swim the Straits of Magellan in Chile, the first to swim across the Skagerrak, and the first to swim around the Cape Point in South Africa, where she had to contend with the risk of meeting sharks, jellyfish, and sea snakes.
Cox is perhaps best known for swimming the Bering Strait from the island of Little Diomede in Alaska to Big Diomede, then part of the Soviet Union, where the water temperature averaged around 4°C (40°F). At the time, in 1987, people living on the Diomede Islands, only 3 km (two miles) apart, were not permitted to see each other, although many people had close family members living on the other island. Even more remarkably, her accomplishment eased Cold War tensions as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Washington, DC to jointly congratulate her success.
Cox’s most remarkable accomplishment was swimming more than a mile in the freezing waters of Antarctica. Although hypothermia would set in most humans inside of five minutes, Cox was in the water for 25 minutes. Her first book, Swimming to Antarctica, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2004.
In August 2006 she swam across the Ohio River in Cincinnati from the Serpentine Wall to Newport, Kentucky to bring attention to plans to decrease the water quality standards for the Ohio River.
The asteroid 37588 Lynnecox was named in her honor.
Source: Lynne Cox. (2006, August 28). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:27, August 28, 2006.
