| Benoit lecomte | |
|---|---|
| Born | France |
| Residence | Texas, USA |
| Known for | Swimming the Atlantic Ocean |
| Website | |
| www.thelongestswim.com | |
Benoît Lecomte (born 1967) is a French long distance swimmer who has received wide credit for being the first man to swim across the Atlantic Ocean without a kick board in 1998.[1] He did this to raise money for cancer research as a tribute to his father.[1] During his 3,716 mile journey in 74 days, he was followed by a support boat that had an electromagnetic field for 25 feet to ward off sharks. He did, however, still encounter sea turtles, dolphins, and jellyfish.[1]
The feat took him 72 days, with 6–8 hours spent swimming each day in sessions of about two hours' length. He was accompanied by associates in a boat, where he could rest and eat between each swimming period.[1] The swim extended from Hyannis, Massachusetts to Quiberon, Brittany, France. He stopped for 1 week in the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean.
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Benoit Lecomte plans to swim the Pacific Ocean[2] in 2012 from Japan to California. He plans to raise funds for research through his swimming. The distance to be covered is 5419 miles and plans to start the swim from Choshi, Japan. Lecomte has already started training for his feat by bicycling, running, and swimming. The swimmer would face similar challenges he had during the swim across the Atlantic Ocean such as warding off sharks and facing strong currents.
Since there is no standard definition of the feat "swimming across the Atlantic", there is uncertainty about the distance that Lecomte actually covered swimming in the water rather than riding in a boat: according to the Rocky Mountain News, Lecompte would have had to average 8 mph to have swum the entire distance, 3-4 times as fast as other long-distance swimmers. [1]