You might have heard of him already, his amazing expeditions all around the world have attracted quite a lot of media attention. On February 1, he began an attempt to swim along the entire lenght of the Amazon river.

But this, however, is not his first adventure.

Born October 1, 1954 in Mokronog, Slovenija, Martin Strel begun his rivers-to-beat challenge after Slovenia's independence in 1992 with his homeland river Krka (109km in 28hrs), followed in 1993 by "swimming for a clean and green Kolpa river" (62km in 16hrs). Let's take a brief look at the history of his achievements.

In 1993 he won the race across the Wuhan-Yangtze (Blue River) in China (7.2km in 46mins). In 1994, back in Europe, he set a new world distance record in uninterrupted ocean swimming (Lignano-Ravenna, 162.5km in 55hrs 11mins). After beating another record by swimming from Caorle/Italy to Umag/Croatia (56km in 18hrs 28mins), he concentrated on swimming pool, in 1996 in Ljubljana (24hrs, covered 78km) and in the same year in Zurich (12hrs, covered 41.2km).
Swimming from Venice/Italy to Portorož/Slovenia (100km in 41hrs,11mins) he improved the best time on this route. In 1997 he set out on another great adventure, that was to swim accross the English Channel, in strong-current waters at 14º Celsius only. Martin swam across it in 16hrs 28mins, 5s (61km).
In the same year he undertook a 78km swimming from Africa to Europe. He was the first to accomplish this route (seven swimmers had attempted this before, all failed) and he did it without a wetsuit and under supervision of 7 international judges.
Back to the Zurich swimming pool in 1998, Strel improved his record (12hrs, covered 43km). The following two challenges in 1998 covered the 53km Italian route from Ponce to Terracina (interrupted after 23hrs) and uninterrupted Ligurian coast swimming under the motto "For the World Wide Fund for Nature".
1998 has been a tiring year, yet this has not kept him away from setting out for another two Slovene rivers: the Mura river (36km in 3hrs 20mins) and the Ljubljanica river (25km in 5hrs 45mins).
In 1999 he achieved the new best time and European record by swimming 100km in 36hrs 30mins on the Slovenian/Italian route (Koper-Grado-Venice), which was followed by setting new best time in lake Garda/Italy (65km in 21hrs 27mins 35s).

In 2000 he swam along the Danube river (3004km in 58days), which brought a new world distance record: Martin Strel's name goes in the Guinness Book of Records. He was first to swim the Danube from source to estuary. Another of his ventures on the Danube river was a 504.5km non-stop swimming in 2001 (it took him 84hrs 10mins), which was a new world record.

The next adventure took him to the Mississippi river/USA. Martin swam the entire lenght of it, 3797km, in 68days. This was the absolute record in marathon swimming (Guinness Book of Records recognition) and he was the first to swim the river from source to estuary.

By making all the way from Iguazu Falls (Brasil/Argentina) to the center of Buenos Aires in the Rio de La Plata he became the first man to have swam the entire 1930km of the pretentious Paraná river. This expedition of 2003 took him 24days.

In 2004 Martin Strel surpassed his record from the Mississippi river. The project of Yangtze river in China was the most demanding one, yet a new Guinness Record has been broken: this was the longest distance ever swam in history.  He swam the 4003km long Yangtze river in 51 days only.

After those big projects he travelled to the Czech Republic in 2005 to swim in Vltava for peace, friendship and clean waters, as he called this promotional project that was given a special support by the Mayor of Prague who accompanied Martin on the last kilometre (out of 364) before the city of Prague. The swimming, however, took him 7 days.

In the June of 2006 Strel beat the 450kms of the Drava river in 7days swim from Austrian Lienz to Croatian Varaždin.

As mentionend above, he is attempting to overcome the one of two longest rivers in the world, the Amazon river at the moment, facing the danger of piranhas, sharks and tidal bore about 4 metres high (pororoca). If achieved it will be another record-breaking distance of 5428 km, longer than the width of the Atlantic ocean.

You can read more about Martin and his projects on his official web page .
Now you have the chance also to view his track in Google Earth and subscribe to news about his expedition. For further reading on his Amazon swim, click here .
Wishing Martin Strel another successful expedition and – still water!