Cox, Lynne (1957—)

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Cox, Lynne (1957—)

American long-distance swimmer. Born on January 2, 1957, in Manchester, New Hampshire; daughter of Estelle Cox (an artist) and Albert Cox (a radiologist); attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she majored in history.

Set a new English Channel record for both men and women (1972); was the first woman to successfully swim Cook Strait (1975); crossed the Bering Strait (1987); swam ten miles across Peru's Lake Titicaca (1992); completed 14-mile swim across the Gulf of Aqaba (1994); also swam the Nile, Africa's Cape of Good Hope, and Siberia's Lake Baikal.

Lynne Cox was the first woman to successfully swim Cook Strait. Separating New Zealand's North and South islands, this 13½-mile, shark-infested waterway is considered one of the most demanding of all long-distance swims. Only three swimmers had conquered this swim before Cox, at 18, made history in 1975.

Lynne was born into a family of swimmers. Her grandfather swam across the Hudson River, and both her parents swam for recreation. "My husband and I taught the children how to swim when they were very young," said Cox's mother Estelle . Cox credits her older brother David, a successful long-distance swimmer, with inspiring her. "He started competitive swimming and got me into it," she recalled. When the siblings swam the same waterways, they did so from opposite directions to avoid rivalry. Their father Albert sponsored Lynne and David's marathon swims at a cost for each foreign swim of approximately $3,000. With Lynne's success, she could have found another sponsor but was determined not to mix her passion for swimming with prize money: "One of my biggest disappointments was meeting some of my childhood idols. Somehow when they started swimming strictly for money rather than the challenge, it really disturbed me. It wasn't sport anymore." Almost every day, Cox swam ten miles in the Pacific, near the family home in Los Alamitos, California.

In 1972, with the memory of Gertrude Ederle motivating her, Cox attempted the English Channel, considered the Mt. Everest of marathon swims. Before her, only 200 of the 1,400 swimmers who had attempted the swim between England and France had succeeded. The young Cox set the record on July 20 with a time of 9 hours and 57 minutes. When Richard David, an Army lieutenant, broke her record by 13 minutes, Cox faced the swim a second time and again set the record with a time of 9 hours and 36 minutes.

Although she'd crossed the English Channel twice and swam the muddy waters of the River Nile in 1974 (swimming past alligators and dead dogs), her New Zealand swim of 1975 was by far her toughest. Five hours into her battle with the 40-knot winds, 58-degree water, and 8-foot swells, Cox was ready to quit: "I was physically and mentally exhausted. It was dark out there and I couldn't see the land I was swimming to. I tried to keep myself busy by counting strokes and singing John Denver songs… usually singing about the sunshine because it was cold. I tried to keep the negative thoughts out of my head but they started grabbing me." Then the pilot spotted what were thought to be sharks. As it turned out, Cox was greeted by dolphins instead. "They swam up to me and would dive in and out of the water," she recalled. "They kept me company. Just like they were friends urging me on." Just over seven hours later, Cox was triumphant.

In 1987, Cox crossed the frigid waters of the 40-degree Bering Strait, a 2.7 mile swim between Little Diomede Island in the United States to Big Diomede Island in the former Soviet Union. "In 2 hours and 6 minutes, I swam across the international dateline," said Cox. "I made the swim to show that our countries are neighbors." The symbolism did not go unnoticed. When the Soviet Union's president Mikhail Gorbachev began treaty negotiations with the U.S. soon after, he mentioned her name in his opening remarks.

In 1992, she swam ten miles across Peru's Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake, and was fodder for aquatic organisms that left huge welts all over her body; in 1994, she completed a 14-mile swim, against the current, across the Gulf of Aqaba to symbolically unite Jordan, Egypt, and Israel. A woman whose goal it was to swim every conquerable distance of water between landmarks, Cox once remarked: "I don't know what I'd do with myself if I didn't swim."