Last year, I met Lynne Cox, one of the world's best open water swimmers, and wrote a profile about her for our January/February 2008 issue. Cox became famous for breaking a world record when she swam across the English Channel as a teenager, and in her adult career she moved beyond breaking speed records to performing a number of swimming "firsts" around the world, from crossing the Straits of Magellan in South America to swimming one mile in Antarctica's 32 F iceberg-studded water. Did I mention she wears nothing more than a regular TYR bathing suit during each frigid swim?
When I interviewed her, Cox mentioned that she was writing an article for the New Yorker about her latest swimming adventure. She wasn't allowed to talk about the project until the article published, which it did this week with the highly understated title "A Dip in the Cold."
It turns out Cox has bested herself yet again. Last summer, she performed four swims along the Arctic's Northwest Passage, which runs between Greenland and Alaska, that were as cold—or colder—than her Antarctic swim. In fact, she swam in water that was 28 F; most of us would be hypothermic within seconds if submerged in water so cold.
Cox performs her historic swims with little fanfare or media attention. She told me she continues to do cold water swims to see how far she can push herself. But she's doing the rest of us a favor, too: expanding the supposed boundaries of what the human body can achieve.
—Kristin Harrison
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