Trans Swimmer Lev Goldberg Continues Quest to Traverse Every Great Lake

If you haven’t swum across at least one Great Lake, what are you doing with your life?Transgender athlete Lev Goldberg is already on his second, with a planned swim across Lake Huron scheduled for the first week of August, according to Now Toronto. Last September, Goldberg — whose Instagram handle is appropriately @lev.swims.lakes in one of those “exactly what you see on the tin” scenarios — traversed Lake Ontario in a single 24-hour swim, making history as the first openly trans person to make the crossing, per Now.In an Instagram Reel celebrating the accomplishment, Goldberg shared that he started his 2025 Great Lake crossing at Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario around 2 AM on September 3 and had to push through a strong current from the Humber River in order to make it to the end, just over a day later. In photos, he can be seen wearing about as much sunscreen as humanly possible, which is kind of giving “transgender lake ghost” in the best way. Goldberg also reported raising over $7,000 CAD for LGBT YouthLine, an Ontario-based nonprofit that runs a youth support hotline.Goldberg, who is also an accomplished marathon runner — because why wouldn’t he do that, too? — is using his planned Huron crossing to fundraise for LGBT YouthLine once again. This time, he’s also promised to be better about documenting and celebrating his incredible achievements on social media.“Last year I was so intimidated by social media!” he wrote on Instagram earlier this week. “I had friends and family helping me out and making posts for me, which was super nice of them, but it wasn’t my voice. This year I’ve gone out of my comfort zone and learned that really, it’s not that hard—I can totally make posts and edit reels myself. And actually, I really like it and I’m not bad at it!”He’s already seeing one of the benefits of finding his voice: A GoFundMe for his Huron swim has already raised over $10,000 CAD — or over $7,000 CAD — as of this writing