Pugh plans North Pole swim
2007-05-27 20:14
London - A Cape Town adventurer is planning
to highlight the effects of global warming by becoming the first
person to swim at the North Pole and break his own record for
the coldest swim.
Sporting just a cap, trunks and goggles, Lewis Gordon Pugh
will swim 1km in water at a temperature of minus
1.8 degrees Celsius on July 15, a dip he expects to last 21
minutes.
Such a swim would have been impossible as little as 10 years
ago because the water would have been frozen, Pugh says.
"Most people have no idea that you can find patches of open
sea at the North Pole in summer," said Pugh, who set the record
for the coldest human swim off Antarctica at 0 degrees Celsius.
"I can't think of a better way to show that climate change
is a reality than by swimming in a place that should be totally
frozen over. I hope it will ... put pressure on the leaders of
the G8 summit to cut carbon emissions dramatically," he said in
a statement.
Climate change is expected to be high on the agenda at a
meeting of the Group of Eight leading industrial countries in
Germany next month.
Nicknamed the Polar Bear
Last year Pugh broke his own world record for the longest
ice water swim by covering 1.2km in a fjord in the Norwegian
mountains, staying in the water for 23 minutes 50 seconds.
Any normal person would hyperventilate, suffer extreme shock
and drown within minutes of jumping into near freezing water,
but Pugh - nicknamed the Polar Bear because of his ability to
withstand freezing temperatures - is made of sterner stuff.
In preparation for his swim, Pugh, 37, has increased his
body weight from 87kg to 105kg by eating six meals a day, and
has trained by swimming in a specially designed ice pool.
"This is the coldest water any human being will have swum in
and Lewis has been extraordinarily dedicated," Professor Tim
Noakes of the University of Cape Town, an expert on the effect
of cold water on the human body, said in the statement.
Pugh will spend his last month of training at a Norwegian
glacial lake with Jorgen Amundsen, a relative of Roald Amundsen,
the first man to reach the South Pole in 1911.
"This expedition represents the end of an era of Arctic
exploration as we know it," said Amundsen, who will ski the last
10km to the North Pole with Pugh before his swim.
"It's becoming increasingly difficult to walk to the North
Pole and many expeditions fail each year when they encounter big
stretches of open sea," added Amundsen.
Pugh, a lawyer and "ambassador" for the environmental group
WWF, says he is the only person to have completed a long
distance swim in each of the five oceans, and last year he swam
the length of England's 203-mile River Thames.