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The Atlantic Swim Hoax
Status: miscommunication
A couple of people emailed me about this, though I think it's more a case of miscommunication rather than a deliberate hoax. A little over a week ago the media reported that 56-year-old Jennifer Figge had become the first woman to swim the Atlantic. But then people started to do the math, and realized that if she had really swum 2100 in 25 days, then she had performed a superhuman feat.
Two days later the AP published a retraction, quoting Figge's spokesman who stated she swam only 250 miles, not 2100. Which is why it seems more like a case of miscommunication to me. Figge didn't appear to go out of her way to promote the claim she had swum the Atlantic.
To find a real long-distance swimming hoax, you need to go back to 1927 when Dorothy Cochrane Lange claimed to have swum the English Channel, but a few days later admitted she had only swum the first and last mile. Her motive, she said, was to prove how easy it was to pull off such a hoax.
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Categories: Sports Posted by Alex on Tue Feb 17, 2009 |
Comments (4) |
| More from the Hoax Museum Archives: | |||
Apparently a female purple martin "allegedly" flew from the Amazon Basin to Pennsylvania, 4660 miles, in only 13 days, averaging 358 miles a day. How gullible does that bird think we are?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2009/02/small-songbirds.html
Posted by Canadarm on Tue Feb 17, 2009 at 02:06 PM
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2009/02/small-songbirds.html
"Miscommunication"? This same thing happened 10 years ago (Benoit Lecomte) but at least LeComte had the good sense of doing for 73 days. There would be no cheap/easy way of staying in place while resting. My guess is that Lecomte at least swam a few hundred more miles.
It is an amazing feat, of course, but this Figge woman really seemed to foster deception and the press should be ashamed of their stupidity.
Posted by floormaster squeeze in Spring Hill on Wed Feb 18, 2009 at 03:00 PM
It is an amazing feat, of course, but this Figge woman really seemed to foster deception and the press should be ashamed of their stupidity.
I, Raoul, Man of a Thousand Strokes, have also swam across the Atlantic Ocean. It took me three days, but I had to fight many winds and great beasts of the deep, so I was slowed down. I did so naked and coated with petroleum jelly, and for this I had practiced on many Saturday nights. And I swam some, too... ha ha hah, Raoul is just fooling you, so don't get upset, okay? Rrrraoul
Posted by Raoul on Sun Feb 22, 2009 at 11:42 AM
I actually worked on his sons race team at this years Daytona 24hr race.
He was telling us what she was doing, and seemed pretty happy about it...
Posted by Andrew on Mon Feb 23, 2009 at 12:21 AM
He was telling us what she was doing, and seemed pretty happy about it...
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