As Annaleise Carr left the water Sunday, she became the youngest girl ever to swim the 32-mile (52 km) crossing of Lake Ontario, besting her long-time hero Marilyn Bell, who made the first such crossing in 1954 at the age of 16.
After the brutal 27-hour ordeal, the 14-year-old Carr smiled wide as she laid hands on the rungs of a ladder that would lead her out of the lake she had just conquered.
Her fundraising goal of $50,000 was exceeded Sunday while in mid-swim, when she received a single donation of $10,000 to buoy her spirits.
The Ontario teen had raised more than $90,000 for Camp Trillium — a summer camp for children with cancer — at the time of this writing.
–READ the full story, with video, in the Toronto Star
–Learn more at AnnaleisesLakeOntarioCrossing.weebly.com