Meda McKenzie

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Meda-Therese McKenzie (born 1963), commonly known as Meda McKenzie, is a former New Zealand long-distance swimmer. Born in Wellington, she was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame in 1996. At age 15 she swam the Cook Strait, and in 1978 she completed a second crossing in the opposite direction. She also swam the Foveaux Strait, the English Channel, and did a double crossing of the Bristol Channel in England.

After retiring to raise two children, she returned five years later to swim across Lake Erie in Canada, achieving two firsts: the first woman to complete a double Cook Strait crossing, and a circumnavigation of Rarotonga. In the 1978 Queen's Birthday Honours, she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for being the first New Zealand woman to swim Cook Strait and the first person to swim Cook Strait in both directions.