音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:00.00]Keep Your Goals in Sight 莫让目标太遥远
[00:05.96]When she looked ahead,
[00:08.68]Florence Chadwick saw nothing but a solid wall of fog.
[00:13.18]Her body was numb.
[00:15.03]She had been swimming for nearly sixteen hours.
[00:18.75]Already she was the first woman to swim
[00:22.26]the English Channel in both directions.
[00:24.65]Now, at age 34,
[00:27.07]her goal was to become the first woman to swim
[00:30.45]from Catalina Island to the California coast.
[00:34.30]On that Fourth of July morning in 1952,
[00:37.90]the sea was like an ice bath and the fog
[00:41.08]was so dense she could hardly see her support boats.
[00:44.91]Sharks cruised toward her lone figure,
[00:48.06]only to be driven away by rifle shots.
[00:51.25]Against the frigid grip of the sea,
[00:54.42]she struggled on—hour after hour—
[00:57.06]while millions watched on national television.
[01:00.44]Alongside Florence in one of the boats,
[01:03.93]her mother and her trainer offered encouragement.
[01:06.79]They told her it wasn’t much farther.
[01:09.29]But all she could see was fog.
[01:12.04]They urged her not to quit.
[01:14.43]She never had . . .
[01:15.86]until then.
[01:17.07]With only a half mile to go,
[01:20.12]she asked to be pulled out.
[01:22.43]Still thawing her chilled body several hours later,
[01:26.69]she told a reporter,
[01:28.45]"Look, I’m not excusing myself,
[01:31.29]but if I could have seen land I might have made it."
[01:35.21]It was not fatigue or even the cold water that defeated her.
[01:39.91]It was the fog.
[01:42.00]She was unable to see her goal.
[01:44.42]Two months later, she tried again.
[01:48.02]This time, despite the same dense fog,
[01:51.84]she swam with her faith intact
[01:54.26]and her goal clearly pictured in her mind.
[01:57.20]She knew that somewhere behind that fog was land
[02:01.03]and this time she made it!
[02:03.01]Florence Chadwick became the first woman
[02:06.71]to swim the Catalina Channel,
[02:08.80]eclipsing the men’s record by two hours!