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International Swimming Hall of Famer and Alex Award-winner Lynne Cox's classic sports memoir Swimming to Antarctica is "a portrait of rare and relentless drive" (Sports Illustrated).Here is the acclaimed life story of a woman whose determination inspires everyone she touches. Lynne Cox started swimming almost as soon as she could walk. By age sixteen, she had broken all records for swimming the English Channel. Her daring eventually led her to the Bering Strait, where she swam five miles in thirty-eight-degree water in just a swimsuit, cap, and goggles. In between those accomplishments, she became the first to swim the Strait of Magellan, narrowly escaped a shark attack off the Cape of Good Hope, and was cheered across the twenty-mile Cook Strait of New Zealand by dolphins. She even swam a mile in the Antarctic.Lynne writes the same way she swims, with indefatigable spirit and joy, and shares the beauty of her time in the water with a poet's eye for detail. And this paperback edition of Swimming to Antarctica expands upon the detail of her extraordinary atheleticism with exclusive photos and maps throughout.
List of contents
Prologue: A Cold Day in August 1
Beginnings 7
Leaving Home 14
Open Water 27
Twenty-six Miles Across the Sea 40
English Channel 57
White Cliffs of Dover 69
Homecoming 95
Invitation to Egypt 102
Lost in the Fog 124
Cook Strait, New Zealand 134
Human Research Subject 146
The Strait of Magellan 160
Around the Cape of Good Hope 177
Around the World in Eighty Days 194
Glacier Bay 204
Facing the Bomb 224
The A-Team 234
Mind-Blowing 248
Debate 265
Across the Bering Strait 282
Success 302
Siberia's Gold Medal 307
Swimming to Antarctica 314
Afterword 358
About the author
LYNNE COX has set records all over the world for open-water swimming. She was named a Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year, inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, and honored with a lifetime achievement award from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Swimming to Antarctica, which won an Alex Award. She lives in Los Alamitos, California.
Summary
International Swimming Hall of Famer and Alex Award-winner Lynne Cox's classic sports memoir Swimming to Antarctica is "a portrait of rare and relentless drive" (Sports Illustrated).Here is the acclaimed life story of a woman whose determination inspires everyone she touches. Lynne Cox started swimming almost as soon as she could walk. By age sixteen, she had broken all records for swimming the English Channel. Her daring eventually led her to the Bering Strait, where she swam five miles in thirty-eight-degree water in just a swimsuit, cap, and goggles. In between those accomplishments, she became the first to swim the Strait of Magellan, narrowly escaped a shark attack off the Cape of Good Hope, and was cheered across the twenty-mile Cook Strait of New Zealand by dolphins. She even swam a mile in the Antarctic.Lynne writes the same way she swims, with indefatigable spirit and joy, and shares the beauty of her time in the water with a poet's eye for detail. And this paperback edition of Swimming to Antarctica expands upon the detail of her extraordinary atheleticism with exclusive photos and maps throughout.
Additional text
PRAISE FOR SWIMMING TO ANTARCTICA
"This would make a great story even if Cox couldn't write. But she can . . . She's done things the rest of us only imagine-and she's written a book that helps us to imagine them with clarity and wonder." -THE BOSTON GLOBE
"What emerges here is an athlete whose determination is so fierce that it seems almost exotic. She is fit. She is focused. She is Lance Armstrong with body fat."-USA TODAY
"More than the story of the greatest open-water swimmer, Swimming to Antarctica is a portrait of rare and relentless drive . . . Cox's understated style makes for gripping reading."
-SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
