Facing Fear with Kim Chambers

Wild Ideas Worth Living

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4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2019

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kim Chambers was 30 years old, an athlete and a powerful executive, when she slipped and fell down a set of stairs. The injuries she sustained changed the course of her life. In 2014, she became the sixth person (and third woman) to complete the Oceans Seven. In 2015, Kim became the first woman to swim 30 miles from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, a swim that’s incredibly dangerous.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Kim Chambers is a swimmer and that's putting it lightly. You won't find her at a local gym or community pool swimming laps.
0:15.7	Instead, you'll find her in shark-infested freezing cold waters
0:19.8	off the coast of Northern California. In less than 10 years, Kim has become one of the world's
0:25.2	top marathon swimmers. She's a total badass, someone who's learned to face beer head on. I'm Shelby Stanger and this is wild ideas worth living. Kim didn't just decide to become a swimmer one day. Growing up in New Zealand, she challenged herself, finding an affinity for athletic
0:53.2	endeavors like ballet and rowing, but her journey to the open water wasn't as
0:58.0	simple as you might think. Tell me a little bit about growing up in New Zealand and you said he wanted to be a ballerina.
1:05.6	Yeah, so I was a ballerina for 15 years from the age of 2 to 17 and I grew up on a farm a sheep farm and I was this girl who was kind of a
1:17.3	tomboy who loved animals but also loved to express herself on stage and my mom facilitated that. I traveled around the
1:26.7	country New Zealand performing and I set all these exams and I was became
1:31.6	qualified to teach and it consumed my life.
1:36.2	So how did you go from being a ballerina to then rowing crew at Berkeley?
1:42.3	Yeah, so I I'm lucky that I have been naturally athletic and my older
1:48.7	brother was accepted into Berkeley as a rower.
1:53.0	So they said, well, Kim, you're, you know, you're tall, you're coordinated, why don't you
1:58.2	go on the men's, on the women's rowing team?
2:00.3	And I was like, okay.
2:02.0	And I did it, It wasn't pretty, but I love pushing myself
2:06.9	athletically and that allowed me an avenue to do that.
2:12.1	So take us how you got into swimming because this story is incredible.
2:17.2	So I rode on the Berkeley rowing team and I was kind of I was basically kind of like a gym rat and I was living a life that as I look back it was pretty superficial
2:28.3	I was obsessed with being skinny I was obsessed with being able to fit into designer outfits and in 2007 just shortly
2:39.1	after my 30th birthday I was going to a freelance job, I was wearing a pant suit that was more expensive
	...

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