Lynne Cox

Lynne Cox ( born 1957 in Boston ) is an American long-distance swimmer and author.

In 1971, she managed to swim and their teammates as the first teenage group the Santa Catalina Channel in California. Twice (1972 and 1973) Lynne Cox undercut or held the record (both men and women ) for the fastest swim across the English Channel. In 1975, Cox was the first woman to warm the 10 ° C and 22 kilometers ( 13.7 miles ) wide mastered Cook Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand as a swimmer. 1976 was the extreme athlete, the first person who swam across the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of Chile. She overcame then the Sound between Denmark and Sweden as well as the Skagerrak between Sweden and Norway, and put an 8 mile stretch in the waters around the Cape Point in South Africa, where they had to reckon with the danger of sharks, jellyfish and sea snakes.

Cox is likely to become best known for a realized on 7 August 1987 difficult exercise: She crossed the Bering Strait from belonging to Alaska island Little Diomede which at the time of the Soviet Union (now Russia) belonging island Big Diomede - in a strait, where the water temperature amounts to an average of 4 ° C. Although many residents of the Diomede Islands had family members who lived on the other island, them permission was refused at that time to see their only three kilometers (two miles) away from each other living relatives. All the more remarkable, it was during a time of Cold War tensions, as in Washington, DC U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev Lynne Cox congratulated together on their performance.

In 1988, she swam the first woman to Lake Baikal, the 1992 Lake Titicaca. Another remarkable Cox'sche performance was swimming in the icy waters of the Antarctic in 2002. Although most people adjust their body functions within five minutes with hypothermia, Cox was for 25 minutes in the water and put 1.06 miles, which works out at about 1.7 km, from the ship to the port to swimming.

Lynne Cox has published several books. The first " Swimming to Antarctica" ( German: " The Sea of ​​Ice swimmer " ) was founded in 2004, the second " Grayson " ( German: "The Little Whale "), which is about an encounter with a gray whale baby, was released in 2006.

Honors

In 2000, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the international swimming sport. Furthermore, the asteroid was 37588 Lynnecox named in her honor.