women swimmers

The author shares her story of survival as a Syrian refugee stranded in the waters between Syria and Greece in a sinking boat. Highlights how she and her older sister, Sara, heroically pulled the boat to the shore as they swam through the choppy sea. Later, Yusra bravely goes after her dream of being an Olympic swimmer--a goal she attains when she swims in the 2016 Olympics.

Profiles American Olympic swimmer Katie Ledecky, who has set several international records and won medals at both the 2012 and 2016 games.

At fifteen, Casey Legler is already one of the fastest swimmers in the world. She is also an alcoholic, isolated from her family, and incapable of forming lasting connections with those around her. Driven to compete at the highest levels, sent far away from home to train with the best coaches and teams, she finds herself increasingly alone and alienated, living a life of cheap hotels and chlorine-worn skin, anonymous sexual encounters and escalating drug use. Even at what should be a moment of triumph?competing at age sixteen in the 1996 Olympics?she is an outsider looking in, procuring drugs for Olympians she hardly knows, and losing her race after setting a new world record in the qualifying heats. After submitting to years of numbing training in France and the United States, Casey can see no way out of the sinister loneliness that has swelled and festered inside her. Yet wondrously, when it is almost too late, she discovers a small light within herself, and senses a point of calm within the whirlwind of her life. In searing, evocative, visceral prose, Casey gives language to loneliness in this startling story of survival, defiance, and of the embers that still burn when everything else in us goes dark.

Shares the life of Yusra Mardini, a Syrian refugee turned Olympic star.

A competitive swimmer in Syria, Yusra Mardini never let go of her Olympic dream, even when civil war made it too difficult to train in her country. In 2016, she was allowed to compete in the Rio Olympics as part of a special team for refugees. This was only months after making a daring crossing of the Mediterranean Sea in a sinking boat that she helped tow to shore. Dozens of lives were saved on the voyage. Still training, Mardini also acts as a spokesperson and educator for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees.

The author provides a memoir of her years as a swimmer, offering an inside look at the worlds of professional and recreational swimming. She also discusses how her swimming experience has shaped her work as an artist and author.

What does it take to become a champion? Gold medalist Missy Franklin, along with her parents, D.A. and Dick, tell the inspirational and heartwarming story of how Missy became both a legendary athlete and a happy and confident woman, something they accomplished by doing things their own way and making the right choices for their family.

On the morning of August 6, 1926, Gertrude Ederle stood in her bathing suit on the beach of Cape Gris-Nez, France, and faced the churning waves of the English Channel. Twenty-one miles across the perilous waterway, the English coastline beckoned. If Trudy reached it successfully, she would be the first female swimmer, and only the sixth person ever, to do so.

For Annaleise Carr, the motivation to make the gruelling marathon across Lake Ontario came not from a desire for glory. Her ultimate quest was to raise money for her new friends at Camp Trillium, a charity that provides a camping experience for kids with cancer.

Annaleise Carr describes her swim across Lake Ontario in 2012 which she undertook in order to raise money for Camp Trillium, a camp for kids with cancer.