Lynne Cox, the world’s best cold-water open water swimmer, two-time English Channel world record holder, Conqueror of Bering Straits, Member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame is this year’s Master of Ceremonies for the event.
Published: September, 2002
* 500 swimmers will board the California Spirit at Pier 9 on the Embarcadero between Folsom and Harrison St. at 7:30 a.m. The athletes are then taken to the east end of Alcatraz Island where the swim begins at approximately 7:45 a.m. and ends at our clubhouse at the foot of the Hyde St. Pier
at 500 Jefferson St. by 9:00 a.m.
* Lynne Cox, the world’s best cold-water open water swimmer, two-time English Channel world record holder, Conqueror of Bering Straits, Member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame is this year’s Master of Ceremonies for the event.
In 1975, Lynne became the first woman to swim across Cook Straits between the islands of New Zealand. This swim gave her an insight that was to shape the next twelve years of her life, when she realized that long distance swims could be not only an athletic challenge, but also a vehicle for bridging the gap between nations. This original sense of purpose propelled her across the highest, coldest, and most difficult waterways in the world, swims no one had ever attempted before, finally culminating in her swimming across the Bering Strait.
Her most famous swim took place in 1987, when she swam the 2.7 miles of the Bering Straits, 350 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska. Here the water temperature ranges from 38-42 degrees Fahrenheit. Seawater can’t get much colder than this before it turns to ice. Her endurance astonished physiologists monitoring her swim, which is recorded as one of the coldest swims ever completed. It was a swim that had an immediate local effect by reuniting the families of Little Diomede, who lived on the United States side of the border, and Big Diomed, who lived in the Soviet Union. The global effect was much larger as it brought the United States government together with Soviet Union in an exchange of glasnost and perestroika, effectively ending the Cold War.
