Pole Kubkowski becomes first to swim 160km Baltic Sea route from Sweden to Poland

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Polish swimmer Bartłomiej Kubkowski has become the first person in history to swim across the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Poland, covering a distance of just over 160 kilometres (99 miles).

On Sunday evening, an exhausted Kubkowski clambered onto the beach in the town of Dziwnów on Poland’s northern Baltic coast, around 56 hours after he had set off from Kaseberga in Sweden on Friday.

The achievement marks a personal triumph for Kubkowski, for whom this was the fifth attempt to complete the route . His effort this year has raised over 715,000 zloty (€166,000) for children’s cancer treatment so far, with donations to his fundraiser still coming in.

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During the crossing, Kubkowski was unable to sleep and, although a support boat accompanied him and provided food and drink, he was not allowed to touch the vessel itself.

His journey of around 160km was not far off the longest-ever continuous, unassisted open-water swim ratified by the Marathon Swimmers Federation, which was the 168.3 km swum by American Sarah Thomas in 2017 in Lake Champlain, between the US states of New York and Vermont.

Kubkowski has been attempting to swim the route between Sweden and Poland since 2022, getting progressively closer to achieving the goal. Last year, he came within 11km of the Polish coast before extreme exhaustion and deteriorating weather forced him to give up, reported Eurosport.

However, Kubkowski, a former competitive swimmer who now devotes himself to ultraswimming, did last year manage to break the world record for the longest distance swum in a swimming pool over 24 hours, after he managed to cover 103.6 km (64.5 miles).

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Another Polish swimmer, Karolina Szczepaniak, is also currently attempting to swim from Sweden to Poland along a slightly different route to Kubkowski’s. At the time of writing, she is around 110km into the 172km journey, and has raised almost 400,000 zloty for charity.

Szczepaniak, a former Olympic swimmer, also attempted the feat last year, but was forced to give up after 57 hours amid worsening weather.

However, the 146.7km she swam set a new record for the longest distance covered by a female swimmer in the Baltic Sea and a Polish record for open-water swimming by a woman.

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.



Main image credit: b .kubkowski/Instagram