The Swimming Slovenian–Martin Strel: If you live in Slovenia (a (rare) quiet little corner of the Balkans), there’s just not a lot going on. One way to get out of the house is to start swimming, and keep swimming. Slovenian Martin Strel comes from he town of Mokronog, which somehow derives from a fairy tale about people with wet feet, so it’s no surprise that he took to the water. And that’s pretty much where he’s been for the past 5 years. In 2000, Strel swam the length of the Danube (1867 miles). In 2001 he swam non-stop for 84 hours and covered 313 miles (setting a Guinness World record). In 2002 he became the first person to swim the length of the Mississippi, from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, covering the 2360 miles in 68 days. You’d think the guy would be a total prune after all that immersion. But no. In 2003 he swam the Parana River in Argentina (1200 miles). And today he’s going for the Big One. The Big Yellow. The Yangtze. He dropped into its chilly headwaters in Yunnan Province earlier this week, and plans to become the first person to swim the entire length of the river, a mere 2,860 miles. You can follow his swim here. It should take him about two months, swimming 15 hours a day. To succeed Strell will have to brave plenty of whitewater, a dam and a electrical turbine, and 180 million Chinese who live alongside the Yangtze and don’t necessarily have plumbing…



Superswimmer Strell On The Yangtze: “I trained for this one in the sewers of Paris…”