Polish swimmer Bartłomiej Kubkowski has fallen short in his bid to become the first person to swim across the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Poland without any rest. Though Kubkowski managed to swim 130 kilometres in 40 hours, he could not manage the 170-kilometre distance to complete the crossing.
Although he was unable to complete the challenge, the swimmer has so far raised 300,000 zloty (€67,000) for children’s cancer treatment.
Kubkowski set off from the Swedish town of Kåseberga on Tuesday at around 6 p.m. and swam towards the Polish city of Kołobrzeg. During the crossing, he was accompanied by a boat that provided him with food and drinks and also helped keep him on the right path.
Despite undertaking his challenge in the middle of summer, among the difficulties Kubkowski faced was snow falling during the night.
This was Kubkowski’s second attempt to swim across the Baltic Sea. Last year, he tried to go from Kołobrzeg to Sweden, but ended the challenge due to unfavourable sea conditions after 32 hours and 30 minutes and covering a distance of 115 kilometres.
During that previous attempt, he managed to raise over 100,000 zloty for the Cancer Fighters Foundation, and this year his aim was to double that figure. He has exceeded that goal, with 300,000 zloty of donations so far coming in to his fundraising page.
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“I figured that crossing the sea would attract a lot of media attention, and it would be good to use it for a good cause,” Kubkowski told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily last month.
“Many people told me that I was a hero, but believe me, being in the oncology ward and seeing these children, I thought to myself: what is it to swim across the Baltic Sea? It is nothing – to prepare and do it. And the fight against cancer is the real struggle.”
After falling short in this year’s attempt, Kubkowski thanked those who had donated and announced that he would take on the challenge for a third time in 2024
The 28-year-old Pole has been a competitive swimmer for 15 years. He has won 40 Polish championship medals and competed in European and world championships.
In 2018, another Polish swimmer, Sebastian Karaś, became the first to swim from Kołobrzeg to the Danish island of Bornholm, some 100 kilometres away. The same year, the 167-kilometre distance between Poland and Sweden was covered by six swimmers in a relay that took 55 hours and 34 minutes.
The longest continuous, unassisted open-water swim ratified by the Marathon Swimmers Federation was achieved in 2017 by an American, Sarah Thomas, who swum 168.3 km in Lake Champlain, between the US states of New York and Vermont, in 67 hours and 16 minutes.
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Main image credit: b.kubkowski / Instagram
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
