Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [5]
I remember telling my mother, as she drove my siblings and me home from workout in her bright red Buick station wagon, “Mom, Mrs. Milligan said that someday I’m going to swim the English Channel.”
Without giving it much consideration, she said, “Well, if you train hard, I’m sure someday you probably will.”
I couldn’t wait to get home. I ran upstairs, grabbed our National Geographic atlas, and flipped through it until I found the page that featured England and France. Then I began to wonder, How far across is the English Channel? Where do you start to swim? I studied the map and the idea began to take hold in my mind. Maybe someday I would swim the English Channel.
2
Leaving Home
Three years later, when I was twelve years old, my father came home from work one winter evening, opened that same atlas to the pages depicting the United States, and placed the map on the dining room table. He motioned for my brother and sisters and me to look at the map.
“Your mother and I have been discussing moving. We believe that if you want to be successful with your swimming, you need to train with a top-notch coach. We’ve done our research and found that most of the best swimming programs are in these areas,” he said, pointing to Arizona, California, and Hawaii.
We crowded around the table, and my mother said, “We’re tired of the long, cold winters, and your father would like to work with a new group of radiologists with more up-to-date radiology equipment.”
I had never thought of leaving New Hampshire. I loved it there. I loved exploring the wide-open fields of wild red poppies and bright yellow daylilies, the deep emerald forests. I loved gathering brilliantly colored leaves in fall, and building snow caves in the winter. But I knew that I wanted to be a great swimmer.
My father said, “We need to make this decision as a family. If there is anyone who doesn’t want to move, we will stay here.”
For the next couple of weeks we discussed the idea and finally decided to move to California. And with each day I grew more excited. I’d never been there before, but I’d seen it on television and I expected to be surrounded by ranches and cowboys, and large orange orchards. When we flew over Los Angeles, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Below us in the haze of thin smog was a cement city that filled the entire basin, spread to the mountains, and expanded out along the coast. And I had this sinking feeling inside.
Somehow my father knew that it was important for the family to make an immediate connection with California so we would feel like we belonged. He drove us directly from the airport down the 405 freeway to the Belmont Plaza Olympic swimming pool in Long Beach. This was where we would be training with Don Gambril, the head coach for the United States Olympic Team. Gambril had an age-group club team called Phillips 66, which we planned to join, and he coached a college team at California State University, Long Beach. In coaching circles, Gambril was known as one of the best in the world, and because of that he was able to recruit Olympic swimmers from around the world to swim for his college team.
The Belmont Plaza swimming complex had been built for the 1968 Olympic Trials. It was an enormous modern building of tinted glass and metal, situated on a plot of land four hundred yards from the beach, near the Long Beach pier. We stood outside, just staring at the building. Then my mother said, “Look, it’s open. There are people inside.”
I pulled the heavy glass door open and stepped into the spectators’ area. All at once warm, heavy, humid, chlorine-filled air engulfed me. Off to my right was an enormous rectangular pool fifty meters long and twenty-five yards wide. Only a year old, it was beautiful. The water was crystal blue, and the deep blue tile along the edge of the pool sparkled. From the moment I saw it I knew this was a sea of dreams, almost a sacred place. This was the place where the best in the United States had competed to represent us in the Olympic Games. This was the arena, the stage,