Just the Idea of Doing This Sends a Shiver

There are those who find it necessary to do odd and often dangerous things in the name of sport, and then there is Lewis Gordon Pugh.

On Tuesday, Pugh set a world record for the most southerly long-distance swim, covering one kilometer -- about two-thirds of a mile -- in frigid waters and driving snow near the Ukrainian Antarctic base of Vernadsky at 65 degrees south.

That’s one degree farther south than American swimmer Lynne Cox’s similar feat in 2002.

It took Pugh just under 19 minutes.

“As soon as I dived in, I had a screaming pain all over my body,” Pugh, a British lawyer, told Reuters from aboard the expedition ship M.V. Polar.

“I’m not sure how I kept going for so long. I had to concentrate all the time and swim as fast as I could to keep the cold out.”

Pugh, who wore only a swimsuit, cap and goggles, made a similar swim off the Arctic island of Spitzbergen earlier this year and was also the first person to swim around Norway’s North Cape, around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, down a Norwegian fjord and across one of Africa’s Great Lakes.

The Norwegian press has dubbed him “the Ice Bear.”

Other names readily come to mind.

Trivia time: The Buffalo Sabres have won nine games in a row on the road. Who holds the NHL record for consecutive road victories?

Beat it: “We’re going to be tough to beat,” former Boston Red Sox center fielder and leadoff hitter Johnny Damon said after signing a four-year, $52-million deal with the Yankees.

Reaction was swift in coming.

“We?” asked the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy. “Johnny, how could you? It took you only a few minutes and $52 million to start calling the Yankees ‘we.’ Actually, it’s pretty easy to understand. For all his athletic gifts, we always knew Johnny had the depth of your average kiddie pool.”

Green all over: According to New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica, “The Yankees have all-stars or former all-stars at every position on the field except second base [and] they have players making $10 million or more a year at catcher, first base, shortstop, third base, left field, center field [and] right field.”

Dim bulbs: According to reports from England, Manchester United midfielder Wayne Rooney and his fiancee, Colleen McLoughlin, have spent more than $85,000 on lights to decorate their home for Christmas.

Rotten all around: At 4-10 this season and 20-58 over the last five seasons, the Detroit Lions are heading nowhere.

“The next pro football game played at Ford Field,” wrote Bob Wojnowski of the Detroit Free Press, “will be Super Bowl XL on Feb. 5, 2006, and it might take that long to fumigate the place from the stench of spoiled possibilities.”

Trivia answer: Three teams have won 10 consecutive road games: The Buffalo Sabres in 1983-84, the St. Louis Blues in 2000 and the New Jersey Devils in 2001.

And finally: The average price of a ticket purchased on TicketsNow.com for the USC-Texas Rose Bowl showdown is $1,238.