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A 56-year-old has become
the first woman to swim across the Atlantic Ocean. Jennifer Figge
climbed out of the water in Trinidad on February the 5th to write her
name in the record books. She left the Cape Verde Islands near
Africa’s west coast on January the 12th. Her original plan was to
swim in a straight line to the Bahamas. However, bad weather forced
her to change direction and she had to swim an extra 1,600 kilometres
to Trinidad. She spent almost a month in the water, swimming for up
to eight hours at a time. Her day started at 7.00am with a huge
breakfast to keep her energy levels high. She burnt up to 8,000
calories a day during her epic adventure. Her team threw her energy
drinks as she swam to keep her going.
Figge first decided to
swim the Atlantic when she was a teenager. She was on a stormy flight
to the USA and decided if the plane crashed, she could swim back to
shore. She got inspiration from French swimmer Benoite Lecomte, who
became the first man to achieve the feat a decade ago. She trained
for her trans-Atlantic marathon in an outdoor swimming pool
surrounded by snow. Figge said she was never afraid during her swim,
even though she used a shark cage. She said she never saw any sharks,
but did see lots of whales, dolphins and turtles. She thought a lot
about her family and her pet dog while in the water and told the
Associated Press news agency: "My dog doesn't know where I am.
It's time for me to get back home to Hank."
SYNONYM
MATCH: Match the
following synonyms from the article:
| 1. | woman | a. | drove |
| 2 | left | b. | influence |
| 3. | forced | c. | informed |
| 4. | huge | d. | female |
| 5. | epic | e. | rough |
| 6. | stormy | f. | enormous |
| 7. | inspiration | g. | frightened |
| 8. | trained | h. | departed |
| 9. | afraid | i. | heroic |
| 10. | told | j. | practiced |
