Lewis William Gordon Pugh, OIG, (born 5 December 1969) is a British-South African endurance swimmer and ocean advocate. Dubbed the "Sir Edmund Hillary of swimming", he is the first person to complete a long-distance swim in every ocean of the world, and he frequently swims in vulnerable ecosystems to draw attention to their plight.
Pugh is known for undertaking the first swim across the North Pole in 2007 with the aim of highlighting the melting of the Arctic sea ice. In 2010, he swam across a glacial lake on Mount Everest to draw attention to the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas and the impact the reduced water supply would have on peace in the region. In 2018 he swam the full length of the English Channel to call for 30% of the world's oceans to be protected by 2030.
Pugh was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2010 and the United Nations appointed him as the first UN Patron of the Oceans in 2013.
In 2016 Pugh played a role in creating the largest marine reserve in the world in the Ross Sea off Antarctica. The media coined the term "Speedo Diplomacy" to describe his efforts of swimming in the icy waters of Antarctica and shuttling between the US and Russia to help negotiate the final agreement on the reserve.
Pugh currently serves as an adjunct professor of International Law at the University of Cape Town.
Pugh was born in Plymouth, England, on 5 December 1969. His father, P.D. Gordon Pugh, was a surgeon in the Royal Navy, an author, and a prolific collector of ceramics of the Victorian era. His mother, Margery Pugh, was a Senior Nursing Sister in Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service.
Pugh grew up on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon. He was educated at Mount House School in Tavistock. When he was 10 years old his family emigrated to South Africa. He continued his schooling at St Andrew's College in Grahamstown and later at Camps Bay High School in Cape Town. He went on to read politics and law at the University of Cape Town and graduated at the top of his Masters class.
In his mid-twenties he returned to England, where he read international law at Jesus College, Cambridge, and then worked as a maritime lawyer at Ince & Co in the City of London for a decade. During this time he concurrently served as a Reservist in the British Special Air Service.
Over a period of 30 years Pugh has pioneered more swims around famous landmarks than any other swimmer in history. In an interview with Forbes he stated:
"Between Lynne Cox, Martin Strel and myself, we've hit all of the world's major landmarks. There's really nothing left."
In 2013 he was inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame.
Pugh had his first real swimming lesson in 1986, at the age of 17. One month later he swam from Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned) to Cape Town. In 1992 he swam across the English Channel. In 2002 he broke the record for the fastest time for swimming around Robben Island.
He was the first person to swim around Cape Agulhas (the southernmost point in Africa), the Cape of Good Hope, and the Cape Peninsula (a 100 km (62 mi) swim from Cape Town to Muizenberg). Pugh was also the first person to swim across an African Great Lake, namely Lake Malawi.
After 2003 Pugh focused on pioneering swims in the coldest and most hostile waters of the world. All of them were undertaken in accordance with Channel Swimming Association rules, in just a pair of Speedo swimming trunks, cap and goggles. He became the first person to swim around the infamous North Cape, the northernmost point in Europe. The following year he became the first person to swim down the entire length of Sognefjord in Norway, a 204 km (127 mi) swim which took him 21 days to complete.
In 2005 he broke the world record for the farthest-north long-distance swim by undertaking a 1 km (0.62 mi) swim at 80° North around Verlegenhuken, the northernmost cape in Spitsbergen. He followed that five months later by breaking Lynne Cox's world record for the farthest-south long-distance swim by undertaking a 1 km (0.62 mi) swim at 65° South at Petermann Island off the Antarctic Peninsula.
In November 2017, Pugh became be the first person to swim in the Antarctic waters around South Georgia Island.
On both his Arctic and Antarctic expeditions Professor Tim Noakes, a sports scientist from the University of Cape Town, recorded Pugh's ability to raise his core body temperature by nearly 2 °C in anticipation of entering the freezing water. He coined the phrase "anticipatory thermo-genesis" (the creation of heat before an event). This phenomenon had not been noted in any other human. Noakes argues it is a Pavlovian response to years of cold-water swimming, while Pugh believes it is a response to fear.
World Winter Swimming Championships