REVIEW: Swimming to Antarctica

By Umar Nadir

Thirty-two years in the making, “Swimming to Antarctica” is more than just the tale of an elite open-water swimmer.  In this memoir, one finds superb storytelling that often borders on the surreal.  Every page either builds in suspense or reveals a surprise.  Author Lynne Cox shares her swimming experiences journeying across the world to take on some of the world’s straits, lakes, oceans, bays and the English Channel. Her memoir not only demonstrates the effort of family and friends; it also shares a story of national pride.

The reader is introduced to the Cox family preparing to leave their homestead of Manchester, NH.  Lynne’s father has gathered the family and requests they help him with a decision.  It is then that Lynne’s mother explains: “We’re tired of the long, cold winter.”   She also expresses her husband’s desire to work with a new group of radiologists.  After weeks of deliberation, family plans are set – the family is headed to California.

Once in California and almost immediately after arriving, the Cox family drives to the Belmont Plaza Olympic swimming pool: home of the 1968 Olympic trials.  Here Lynne begins training with Don Gambril, a world-class swimming coach.  At Belmont, young Lynne asserts a desire to swim in lane eight (known as the Olympic distance lane) and while she is young, Gambril’s only requirement is that she maintains pace with the swimmers of that lane.

It isn’t long before Lynne is redirected from the pool of Belmont to the Seal Beach Rough Water Swim.  From this moment on the reader is drawn from the precise lanes of the pool toward the shore where waters are the deepest blue.  Here, in her first open-water attempt, Lynne takes to the waves of the wide-open sea and twice beats a group of males and females.

Lynne captures titles for three- and two-mile events at the Seal Beach Rough Water Swim.  Then, in what seems a surreal coincidence, she learns of the Catalina Island swim headed by Seal Beach Swim Team coach Ron Blackledge.  She then requests Gambril get her an opportunity to participate in the open-water challenge that entails a 21-mile swim trek from Catalina Island to the California mainland.  Coach Blackledge gives the teenager a caution, explaining the difficulty of the swim attempt, however Lynne insists on joining the Catalina Swim Team and learns along the way the rhythm of open waters.

With teammates Stacey, Nancy, Dennis and Andy, Lynne embarks upon her first swim which entails abiding by the English Channel Association rules.  After four hours and 10 miles, Nancy is overcome by the cold which has produced in her the beginning of hypothermia. She’s pulled from channel waters.

Meanwhile, the remaining team members persist as the swim comes to a head with 14-year old Lynne at the brink of Catalina Channel’s world record, a record she misses because she treads water waiting for her mates so they may end together.  She is only 14 and sacrificed for her team; Lynne and the Seal Beach Swim Team become the youngest group of teens to swim Catalina’s Channel.

“Swimming to Antarctica” is tight-filled with so many rigors unlike the Catalina Island event and yet the reader is grounded by this initial 21-mile Catalina Island swimming achievement.  As this memoir unfolds, it reveals team upon team, name upon name and the achievements are phenomenal.

Photo: Michael Muller/ESPN

Throughout the memoir the reader is vicariously exposed to precautions and preparations. Some seem commonplace while the others are awe-inspiring.  We’re first exposed to carbo-loading, artificial support and Vaseline globs.   Coining the many precautions and preparations with the multitude of challenges ahead—the story just builds and builds in both suspense and surprise.

The names continue rolling from Hughes to Moreford, Blewett, Prime Minister Rowling, Captain Furniss, Dr. Fernandez, Salazar, Kozlovsky, Dr. Keatinge, Dr. Nyboer, Ambassador Dobrynin, Omiak, Pope John Paul and so many more.  The reader learns of neap tide, cold research, Lake Baikal (the world’s deepest lake), rhinoviruses, Prefectura, electrolytes, mock rescue, breathing, fine motor control, alarming sensations, strokes per minute, ice, hyperventilating, oxygen debt, the vagus nerve, lactic acid, vasoconstriction and ultimately discipline.

Overall the memoir reads like a novel.  Every page informs as the writer recalls with precise clarity the extraordinary pursuit of being the first; time and again and still more significant is this young girl who swims from a child to an adult. 

“Swimming to Antarctica,” like Warren Buffet’s “The Snowball,” Colin Powell’s “My American Journey,” and Hillary Clinton’s “Living History,” celebrates American ideals and promotes excellence for all.  The reader is held in awe by loving bonds that are the result of hard work, belief and bravado.  Lynne says, “I had imagined success, not death.”