| At age 16, Cindy Nicholas became the fastest swimmer of either sex to have crossed Lake Ontario, with a time of 15 hours 10 minutes - and this time still stands as the ladies' record over 25 years later.
This achievement was just the start of a tremendous marathon swimming career which involved 19 crossings of the English Channel - earning her the title of Queen of the Channel, until the record was broken by Alison Streeter, who now has over 30 crossings to her name!
Cindy's numerous Channel crossings and associated records are proudly listed in our page of Canadians who have crossed the Channel. She was the first woman to complete a two-way crossing of The Channel and at the completion of her 19 crossings, ten of them had involved two-way swims, including a two-way World Record of 18:51 in 1982 and an E-F World Record of 8:21 on the first leg of her in 1981 two-way swim.
She also competed in the Lac Saint-Jean 32 km (20 mile) races in 1976, 1977, 1978 and had a tremendous competition with her Canadian rival, Loreen Passfield, who she beat in only the 1976 race.
Numerous awards and recognitions have been showered upon Cindy. In 1978, she was inducted into the Marathon Swimming Hall Of Fame of the International Hall of Fame. She received the Cliff Lumsdon Award of SSO in 1999. Her achievements are well-listed in the biography for her 1993 induction into Swim Ontario's Hall of Fame, and these awards include her appointment to the Order of Canada in 1979. |
Canada