For Lynne Cox, Seal Beach Swim Was Just a Start

For most, the Seal Beach Rough Water Swim provides an enduring challenge. For a few, though, the competition has become an inspiration.

For Lynne Cox, 31, famous for her long-distance swimming feats--particularly her Bering Strait crossing last summer--the event was only a beginning.

“It was at this swim, when I was a teen-ager and won two events, that I realized the Catalina Channel swim was a possibility,” said Cox, who lives in nearby Surfside Colony.

During the next 17 years, Cox wrote her name in the record books with swimming feats throughout the world, but her quest isn’t finished: Now she is training in the colder waters of Anchorage, Alaska, preparing to conquer Lake Mikhail, Siberia, in August. Even in the summer, the lake’s water temperature never reaches 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Though her swimming accomplishments have drawn accolades from President Reagan, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II, Cox sees her purpose as more than sport.

Reaching Out

“I feel people relate to the individual’s struggle and their innate humanity leads them to offer help,” she said. “When I see people reaching out to me, then my response is to reach out again, to them.

“The swimming becomes a vehicle for people to come together. That happened with the Bering Strait swim, and it can happen again with the proposed swim inside the Soviet Union.”

Cox’s warmth, moreover, is directed far beyond world figures, as banker Phillip Monteleone of Long Beach will attest. On many mornings at dawn, Cox has put Monteleone through his training paces in the rough waters off nearby Surfside Beach before he goes to work.

Therapy, New Goals

A lifelong swimmer, Monteleone began ocean workouts as therapy for a serious shoulder injury. As a result of the discipline, he is entering the 3-mile race for the first time. His eventual goal is to swim across San Francisco Bay.

“The swimming has an immediate feedback to goals,” he said. “It can be poetic and meditative. It’s my quiet time. It feels great. There is a big rush to it.”

And he has reached back to Cox by assisting her in setting up Advanced Sport Research, a nonprofit organization for the study and advancement of swimming and hypothermic research. It will help finance Cox’s swim. Contributions may be sent to A.S.R., P.O. Box 6009, Suite 142, 4141 Ball Road, Cypress, Calif. 90630.