Benoît Lecomte

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Benoit Lecomte
Born France
Residence Texas, USA
Known for Swimming Across the Lake Ontario
Website
www.thelongestswim.com

Benoît Lecomte (born 1967) is a French-born long distance swimmer (now a naturalized citizen of the U.S.A.) 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 73 days, he was accompanied by a 40 ft. sailboat that had an electromagnetic field for 25 feet to ward off sharks. He was followed by a great white shark for 5 days. He also encountered sea turtles, dolphins, and jellyfish.[1]

The feat took him 73 days, with 8 hours spent swimming each day in sessions of about two to four hours in length. He was accompanied by a crew of three aboard the sail boat, where he could rest and eat in-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 due to equipment failure. September 25, 1998 he reached the shore of Quiberon.

The Pacific Swim

Benoit Lecomte plans to swim the Pacific Ocean[2] in 2012 from Japan to California. The distance to be covered is approximately 5500 miles and he plans to start the swim from Tokyo, Japan ending up in San Francisco, CA.

Lecomte is to be accompanied by a catamaran and crew and is going to be performing a "staged swim" (resuming the swim in the exact location in which he left the water) using a GPS tracking device, enabling him to accurately track the number of miles he completes thus enabling him to reach a new world record in open water swimming. Lecomte plans to average about 40 miles a day, swimming eight hours in two four-hour segments.

There are plans to produce a documentary film by Ridgeline Entertainment,[3] and also talks of making it to TV.

Controversy

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, Lecomte would have had to average 8 mph to have swum the entire distance, 3-4 times as fast as other long-distance swimmers.[4]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 BBC News
  2. ↑ "Grand Prairie man plans to swim across Pacific Ocean". Retrieved 27 July 2013. 
  3. ↑ "Ridgeline Entertainment LLC". Retrieved 27 July 2013. 
  4. ↑ "Swimming across the Atlantic? Do the math". Retrieved 27 July 2013. 

See also

  • Guy Delage, the first person to allegedly swim across the Atlantic with the help of a kick board from the Cape Verde Islands to Barbados in 1994.
  • Jennifer Figge, allegedly the first woman to swim "across the Atlantic"
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