Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [129]
Vladimir pulled me away by the elbow and said that the Soviet press wanted to conduct a news conference. Would I be willing to talk with them? Sure, I said, but I knew my body temperature was dropping. I was shivering hard, and Dr. Keatinge kept urging me to go to the tent, but I wanted to talk to them, to answer their questions. I wanted to find out who they were. I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into.
The Soviet press’s questions were direct, complex, and very difficult to answer. They phrased their questions in three or four parts, making sure they could get as many answered as possible. The problem was that each question was translated by Vladimir immediately one after the other, and I was so cold. I was trying as hard as I could to respond, but by the third or fourth question, the reporter would have to repeat him- or herself before I could understand. One reporter from Russian television asked me, “Do you think your swim will contribute to a reduction in nuclear missiles in the United States and the Soviet Union and further the INF treaty? Do the American people really view the Soviet Union as the evil empire? Why did you make the swim? What do you feel now?”
My speech was slurred, and my numb lips weren’t helping me speak. I tried to quickly sort out my thoughts and feelings. How could I possibly speak for the American people?
But this was what they were asking me to do.
Vladimir translated what I said into Russian. “The reason I swam across the Bering Strait was to reach into the future, to cross the international date line, and to symbolically bridge the distance between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was to generate goodwill and peace between our two countries, our two peoples. I would not have swum here if I believed that this was the evil empire. I can’t say if this swim will contribute to the reduction of nuclear weapons, but I sure hope it does. We need to become friends. That is why I did this; that is why we did this,” I said, pointing to my team.
The media fell silent and did something I had never seen before from the press: they nodded in agreement.
Dr. Keatinge and Dr. Nyboer were getting agitated. They could see that I was starting to stagger.
“We’ve got to move her now. She’s really cooling down,” Dr. Keatinge said.
But the reporter with Radio Moscow asked in English, “Who were the corporate sponsors?”
Suddenly I was embarrassed. I saw all that the Soviets had done— they had moved ships, helicopters, people, everything to this island. Later I would find out they had spent nearly a million dollars. What could I tell them? That no large U.S. corporation had really supported us? That none of them had believed the Soviets would open their border? I didn’t want to embarrass the United States.
Thinking for a moment, I said, “Our sponsors were the American people. They were individuals from all over the United States. They were the ones who supported us. And we had some support from companies like Rocky Boots, Alaska Airlines, and Monotherm.” My teeth were chattering so hard I couldn’t talk anymore.
The Soviet press didn’t understand. They looked perplexed. Didn’t corporate America, the free-enterprise system, support you? Didn’t you get paid millions of dollars for doing this?
I tried to explain that it was the American system that gave me the freedom to make this swim, but that I hadn’t done it for money. I didn’t tell them that I was now in debt trying