There Are 2 Sides to Story of Lynne Cox’s Bering Strait Swim

Lynne Cox was one of my heroes. In 1986, Lynne asked Dale Petranech, chairman of long-distance swimming at U.S. Swimming, to coordinate the last piece of her “round-the-world swim,” circling the Statue of Liberty from and back to Battery Park.

Dale knew that I, as the coach of four world-record swims and organizer of numerous marathon swimming races around Manhattan Island, would help Lynne. At the successful completion of her swim around Liberty Island, I suggested that she call me whenever she needed assistance again.

For more than a decade, Cox sought assistance to swim across the Bering Strait. In 1987, she wrote to Ray Essick, executive director of U.S. Swimming, who passed the letter to Petranech and, once again, I was called upon.

I began the process. Between Feb. 1 and Aug. 7, 1987, I organized the politics and the television coverage that ultimately ensured the project’s success.

In Rich Roberts’ Aug. 16 article on Cox’s recent effort, however, one is left with the impression that the swimmer and I had “a falling out.” It is too vague a description and one is left with the feeling that I participated in severing the ties.

My request of Lynne, as part of our agreement prior to the successful completion of the swim in Soviet territory, was to assist our effort in New York. Our corporation, the New York Amateur Sports Alliance, an umbrella organization composed of Olympic support groups, needed a public relations boost for our main project--the construction of an indoor training and competition facility for all amateur sports aimed at the youth of New York City.

New York has the worst facilities of any city in the United States over 100,000 population.

Cox accepted the offer and promised to speak about the dilemma we faced at the post-swim news conference after we had appeared on a network morning news show.

Cox hastily disappeared from New York after our national appearance and never responded to my telephone calls thereafter. Legal documents began to surface for awhile and then all was quiet. The situation was confusing, enigmatic and caught me and our sports corporation, which had built “bridges” for her, completely by surprise.

In a number of other newspaper and magazine articles, quite a few facts have been altered to fit a different perception of the story of the Bering Strait swim. There are two sides to each page in history. This side is ours.

JOSEPH COPLAN,

Vice President,

New York Amateur

Sports Alliance Corp.