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Today, Vicki is the most successful marathon swimmer in the history of the sport, currently holding an unprecedented fourteen world records. Constantly surpassing the records of other swimmers as well as previous records of her own, Vicki became, to many, the face of marathon swimming both here in Canada and around the world. Vicki is most famous for becoming the first and only person to swim across all five Great Lakes during the summer of 1988 and also for being the only person to complete the 104 km double crossing of Lake Ontario. By the end of Vicki’s marathon swimming career she had completed 6 crossings of Lake Ontario.
How does an unlikely athlete become a world class athlete? There is no magic. Like the majority of people, Vicki is an ordinary person. What she has accomplished is extraordinary. Vicki understood early in life, that if you have a positive attitude and believe in yourself, you can follow your passion and be successful through sheer determination.
Vicki’s dream has always been to make a difference in other peoples lives. Vicki's history-making marathons generated more than $800,000 for Variety Club projects worldwide. Close to $600,000 of this was raised specifically for the Variety Village Sunshine Pool. Her involvement with Variety Village grew when she began to help build a swim team at Variety Village. As one of the two coaches of the team, Vicki played an important role in developing competitive swimming in Canada to where it is today. When she began coaching swimming for the disabled 10 years ago, the swimmers were invited to compete at only 3 meets a year…all of them for disabled athletes only. Vicki immediately started pushing the boundaries by getting the team invited to able-bodied meets. Although there were some initial problems, the swimmers quickly became accepted and welcomed as equals at able-bodied meets. This pattern was continued by the Provincial and National bodies to the point that swimming is now the most integrated sport in Canada.
During this time, Vicki personally trained 7 athletes to the National level, and coached three athletes with a disability in marathon swimming. First, Vicki coached Carlos Costa, a double leg amputee, who became the first athlete with a disability to swim across Lake Ontario. Vicki then coached Ashley Cowan, the 15 year old quadruple amputee who swam across Lake Erie September 7 2001 and most recently Terry – Lynn Langdon, a young woman with Cerebral Palsy who also swam the 20 km crossing of Lake Erie, August 2002. Today, Vicki is expanding again. Recently she moved from Toronto to bring the Variety Village winning attitude to Kingston, Ontario, where she has started the Kingston Y Penguins Aquatic Club, a team for young people with physical disabilities. Soon Vicki's programs will be expanding again, as the Kingston Family YMCA helps her develop more sports like wheelchair basketball and track and field for the disabled at the Y's new satellite facility, the Beechgrove Centre.
Keith was appointed as a member of the Order of Canada, in recognition of her outstanding achievements and service. In 1996 she was inducted into the Terry Fox Hall of Fame, and in 1998 had her most famous arrival and departure point renamed after her. The headlands of the Leslie Street Spit in Toronto, are now called Vicki Keith Point.
Now residing on Amherst Island with her husband John Munro, Vicki spends her quiet time going for walks and enjoying all the wonders of nature that live on the island. The local joke on the island, is that if you hear a loud whoop in early May, don’t panic, it’s probably just Vicki taking her first swim of the season off the shore of their waterfront home.
For more information on Vicki's swim career please visit SoloSwims.com |
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