Winter swimming is the activity of swimming during the winter season, typically in outdoor locations (open water swimming) or in unheated pools or lidos. Many winter swimmers swim with standard swimming costumes rather than with wetsuits or other thermal protection. The activity may or may not involve freezing water, depending on the geographical location and the local temperature. Famous winter swimmers are Lynne Cox and Lewis Gordon Pugh.
Ice swimming is swimming in a body of water with a frozen crust of ice, and may be synonymous with winter swimming in colder countries. This requires either breaking the ice or entering where a spring keeps the water from freezing over. This may also be simulated by a pool of water at 0 °C, the temperature at which water freezes.
Read more about Winter Swimming: Maintaining The Hole in The Ice, Health Benefits, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words winter and/or swimming:
“These are the small townsmen of death,
A man and a woman, like two leaves
That keep clinging to a tree,
Before winter freezes and grows black....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Mead had studied for the ministry, but had lost his faith and took great delight in blasphemy. Capt. Charles H. Frady, pioneer missionary, held a meeting here and brought Mead back into the fold. He then became so devout that, one Sunday, when he happened upon a swimming party, he shot at the people in the river, and threatened to kill anyone he again caught desecrating the Sabbath.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)