Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California.
The stars couldn’t get any brighter in the open water swimming world when Kimberley Chambers, Lynne Cox and Suzanne Heim-Bowen were together last night in San Francisco.
Chambers describes the experience, “Sometimes, we are blessed with a rare opportunity to spend time with not one, but TWO true legends. Tonight, I had the honor of joining Lynne Cox for dinner before her book signing talk here in San Francisco, together with Suzanne Heim-Bowen.
Lynne and Suzanne are world class athletes, in the truest sense and they are my personal heroes.
As a pioneering marathon open water swimmer, Lynne holds numerous world records, excelling in especially cold water. She is only human to have ever swum in Antarctic waters (without a wetsuit, of course) covering a distance of 1.22 miles, she is the first woman to swim the Cook Strait in New Zealand and the first person to swim the Straits of Magellan in Chile. Perhaps her most well-known achievement was her unprecedented swim across the Bering Strait in 1987, becoming the first person in 48 years to cross the US – USSR border.
Suzanne, a fellow Dolphin Club member who has been inducted into the International Masters Swimming Hall of Fame, has the fastest times for most Bay Area open water swims and has held 31 masters world records in freestyle events ranging from 100m to 1500m over her career.
Thank you both for inspiring me to push myself further than I imagined possible, and thank you both for setting the gold standard for athleticism, grace and class in our sport.”
Copyright © 2016 by World Open Water Swimming Association