What to know
- Lev Goldberg is a transgender ultramarathoner based in Toronto who swam across Lake Ontario last year.
- This August, he will attempt to swim across his second Great Lake, Lake Huron. The journey will take 30 hours and will be 55 kilometres long.
- He has a goal to swim across all five Great Lakes.
- Goldberg is raising money in partnership with LGBT Youthline to help vulnerable queer and trans young people.
In one week, Toronto local Lev Goldberg will attempt to swim across Lake Huron.
In 2025, the ultramarathoner became the first openly transgender person to swim across Lake Ontario. It took Goldberg 24 hours straight and he swam a total of 51 kilometres.
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This year, with an ambitious goal to swim all five Great Lakes, Goldberg will be attempting to swim across Lake Huron sometime between Aug. 1 and Aug 7.
He will also be continuing to work with LGBT Youthline for the 55km for Trans Visibility Partnership, which will raise money for the organization, and in turn, vulnerable queer and trans young people.
Goldberg will start his journey in Port Sanilac, M.I. and end in Port Franks, Ont.
In an interview with Now Toronto, he said getting to swim from the United States to Canada feels rather special to him because he’ll be receiving his Canadian citizenship this year.
“I’ve been here 13 years now. That’s really exciting.”
Despite months of training, Goldberg can’t physically swim across Lake Huron yet. He trains by gradually adding volume to his swims until he’s confident he has the stamina to swim all 55 kilometres.
“It’s actually not possible for me to come even close to the distance,” Goldberg explained.
“I will never do a single swim that’s anywhere near 55 kilometres. Looking back on last year, I never actually swam the full distance in a week. I gradually build volume.”
Although Goldberg said he trains in a pool most of the time, he does train in Lake Ontario to acclimate himself to the cold.
“In addition to the building up volume and lots of swimming. I also do a lot of cold water training,” he detailed. “I get into water that’s sometimes under five degrees for up to 10 or 15 minutes to acclimatize myself to cold so that during my swim, if there are portions of it that might be 16 or even 14 degrees, it’ll feel very manageable to me,
Training is only half the battle. Goldberg says continuous eating is what keeps him going for 30 hours straight. During preparations, he has trained his body to digest food while swimming. With any swim over an hour-and-a-half, he’ll always eat every 30 minutes in mostly carb-heavy drinks, sport gels, and vegan marshmallows.
As a transgender athlete, Goldberg is keenly aware of the United States government’s attack on transgender people, especially trans women and girls in sports. He says it’s “directly affected him and it’s so extremely concerning and disheartening to see.”
But he also finds it extremely cool to be an athlete in a sport that doesn’t emphasize gender as much.
“Gender doesn’t function the same way that people assume it does in a lot of other sports.”
Goldberg has already started planning which body of water he’ll swim across next, once he’s finished swimming all five Great Lakes, of course.
“I’m thinking about the Catalina Channel in California one day and I would totally like to swim the English Channel or the North Channel.”
