The moment Martin Strel remembers most sharply from his record Amazon swim was not a current or a stretch of water. It was two dolphins arriving when he needed them.
In a new interview with Unilad, Strel said he twice found himself in the presence of bull sharks during the 2007 expedition. On both occasions, he said, Amazon river dolphins arrived and fought the sharks off before he was hurt.
“Because I’m a musician, I felt like I understand the dolphins, and I was calling, and they helped me, they came helping me,” Strel told Unilad.
He did not film either encounter. The moments only lasted a few minutes, he told the outlet, and were not ones he wanted to interrupt with a camera.
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A 66-day crossing from Peru to Brazil
The swim itself remains the longest open-water journey ever ratified by Guinness World Records. Between February 1 and April 8, 2007, Strel covered 5,268 kilometers (3,273 miles) of the Amazon, from Atalaya in Peru to Belem in Brazil, his daily distances swinging between 9 and 127 kilometers.
Bull sharks were only one of the dangers. Piranhas left scars on his back, an 8-foot caiman circled near the support boat, and the team worked out nightly tactics to avoid pirates on the remote stretches of the river. Strel lost 34 pounds and arrived in Belem with abnormal heart rate and blood pressure, needing ten days of recovery in his hotel room before he could travel.
Four rivers, four Guinness records
The Amazon was the fourth of Strel’s Guinness-ratified river swims. He had already covered the Danube in 2000, the Mississippi in 2002 and the Yangtze in 2004 before taking on the Amazon at 52. Across those four expeditions he swam more than 16,000 kilometers of river.
Still in the water at 72
Strel, born on October 1, 1954, now runs Strel Swimming Adventures with his son, Borut Strel. The company’s 2026 season runs guided swimming trips in Slovenian lakes and rivers, the Croatian islands, Montenegrin fjords, Greece, Turkey and Mexico, built around his long-standing message of clean waters and river conservation.
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