From time to time, even some of the greatest and most prolific heroes in all of sports fall through the cracks of obscurity and are lost to the world at large. Legends of the Periphery celebrates the best of the best among the forgotten, the bizarre, the esoteric, and the obscure.

It takes a man 66 days to swim the entire distance of the Amazon River. We know this because of Martin Strel.

Similarly, we know that it takes an individual 68 days to swim the Mississippi, 58 days to swim the Danube, and 24 days to swim the Paraná in Argentina – all because one Slovenian man took it upon himself to conquer these waterways by means of long-distance swimming.

An athlete, actor,  teacher, promotional figure, business owner, world-record holder, and father – this is but a brief snapshot of the persona Martin Strel embodies. Indeed, Strel has not only appeared in several Slovenian movies and TV shows, but he is also the owner of his own brand of wine, both of which endeavors made possible through recognition of his great swimming prowess. In some circles Strel’s celebrity is unmatched.

Born 1954 in what was then a Slovenian region of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Strel grew up in a turbulent household, frequently at odds with his abusive father. Strel even attributes an uncanny ability to endure great pain from his turbulent relationship with his father in his formative years. Legend has it the first endurance swim Strel ever accomplished wasn’t even by design – he was swimming away from his father.

By his mid-twenties Strel decided to turn habit into a career when he became a professional long-distance swimmer, a vocation that required the Slovenian to supplement his income in other ways during the early years. In order to buoy his ambitions for the long swim, Strel spent time as both a professional gambler and flamenco guitar instructor.

A man of many talents, Strel didn’t start making international headlines until 1992 when he swam the distance of the Krka River (105 km) in 28 total hours. The next year Strel swam the Kolpa River (62 km) in 16 hours, nonstop.

In 2000 Strel took his craft to a new level, swimming the distance of the Danube River, breaking both the world record for non-stop swimming at 504.5 kilometres (within 85 hours) as well as the record for longest swim at 3,004 total kilometres. The Danube is the second longest river in Central Europe.

By this time in his career Strel maintained a strict training regimen that included five hours of swimming every day. The marathon swimmer also included sessions of tanning, riding waterslides, and ample amounts of wine throughout the training process, perhaps to help train his mind as well as his body.

Strel continued to shock the world with more record distance swims in 2002, when he swam the entire Mississippi (3,885 kilometres in 68 days), and in 2004, when he swam the Yangtze (4,003 kilometres in 40 days). According to his crew, which is led in part by his son Borut, the Chinese Yangtze River was so polluted during the swim that Strel would routinely have to swim passed large masses of waste, even dead bodies.

His achievements already a body of work truly a feat to behold, in 2006 Strel would make public his designs for a new expedition, one that he would be known for the world over: to swim the entire distance of the Amazon River.

Never mind the fact that no one on record had ever attempted such a thing before, Strel was 52-years-old at the commencement of the swim, an age at which most are closer to retirement than peak physical shape. Also factor in the fact that Strel would only sleep for approximately four hours per night on typical marathon swims and this is decidedly not an activity that favours the old. But Strel, of course, is far from ordinary.

For 66 days Strel battled against second degree burns, hostile tribes, the threat of crocodiles and piranhas, even an odd type of sea madness that saw Strel administer shock therapy on himself all so he could continue to swim, each stroke taking him that much closer to his finish line where he would continue to spread his message of “peace, friendship, and clean waters.” By the 66th day, Strel was so depleted mentally and physically that once he reached the finish he had to be taken by ambulance for observation at a nearby hospital.

All told, it took Strel several months to recover from his great Amazon swim. His efforts, however, were rewarded in the history books – a record-breaking distance of 5,268 kilometres swam from start to finish, a distance longer than the width of the Atlantic Ocean.

More information on Martin Strel, including ongoing projects, can be found at strel-swimming.com and amazonswim.com.