Ross Edgley

Biography

Ross Edgley (born 13 October 1985) is a British athlete, ultra-marathon sea swimmer and author. He holds multiple world records, but is most recognised for completing the World's Longest Staged Sea Swim in 2018, when he became the first person in history to swim 1,780 miles (2,860 km) around Great Britain, in 157 days (voted Performance of the Year by the World Open Water Swimming Association.) In 2024, he also became the first person in history to simultaneously hold official Guinness World Records for long-distance swimming in the sea and river when he broke the record for the longest non-stop, continuous river swim down the Yukon River (318 miles/510km). In 2025, he also became the first person in history to swim 1,000 miles (1,609km) around Iceland in 114 days. Edgley has documented his training, nutrition, theories and strategies and published them in his books titled The World's Fittest Book (2018), The Art of Resilience (2020), and Blueprint: Build a Bulletproof Body for Extreme Adventure in 365 Days (2021), all of which became Sunday Times bestsellers and have been translated into several other languages.

== Background == Edgley was born into a sporting family in Grantham, Lincolnshire. His father was a tennis coach and his mother was a sprinter. Although playing many sports as a child (football, rugby, trail running and tennis), he specialised in swimming and water polo and represented his country internationally at junior level whilst studying at The King's School, Grantham. He later gained a sports scholarship to study at Loughborough University's School of Sport and Exercise Science, where he continued to train at the British Swimming National Centre. A year into his scholarship, Edgley then retired from international competition and decided to transition into ultra-distance sea swimming instead, which the university supported through the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine. In 2019, he received an honorary doctorate from Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) in Lincoln, for his research into mental and physical resilience and continues to coach and lecture around the world in the science and psychology of adventure.

== Swimming records ==

=== The Great British Swim (2018) ===

Between June and November 2018, Edgley completed a 157-day 1,792 miles (2,884 km) swim around Britain. Aided by a team of experts which monitored the tides and his health in his 16 metres (52 ft) support boat Hecate, he typically swam for six hours, rested for six hours, and then swam for another six hours on repeat. He typically consumed around 15,000 calories a day. The gruelling swim took its toll on his body, disintegrating his tongue through the eroding effect of the salt, giving him "Rhino Neck" from the effect of the wetsuit rubbing, and his feet entirely losing their arches and turning a deep purple and yellow. The team treated him with Sudocrem, Vaseline, plasters, bin bags and duct tape. Edgley's journey was documented as a weekly internet series, "Ross Edgley's Great British Swim", produced by Red Bull TV. After completing the swim in Margate on 4 November 2018, the World Open Water Swimming Association announced it as the World Swim of the Year 2018 and it became officially recognised as "The World's Longest Staged Sea Swim." Talking about his historic swim Edgley said, "It's my hope that people remember the Great British Swim as an example or experiment in both mental and physical fortitude."

=== Length of the English Channel (2018) === During his circumnavigation swim of Great Britain, Edgley also broke several other records. Notably this involved becoming the first person to swim the length of the English Channel from Dover to Land's End, over 350 miles (563 km) in 30 days. Edgley never celebrated the achievement, however, and instead joked it was only a "warm up" because he still had 1,442 miles to swim (and 127 days at sea) before he completed his much larger mission and arrived back in Margate, Kent.

=== Land's End to John o' Groats (2018) === Edgley also accidentally became the fastest person to swim the 900 miles (1,400 km) from Land's End to John o' Groats in 62 days. More than halving the time of the previous record (from Sean Conway of 135 days), Edgley and his crew said they did not realise they had broken another record and were just trying to swim fast enough to avoid an Arctic storm approaching from Iceland. He then became the first person to swim the length of the Moray Firth, before heading to the English border at Berwick-upon-Tweed where he joked, "It was all downhill from here".

=== Yukon River, Canada (2024) === Between 16 and 18 June 2024, Edgley set a new official Guinness World Record for his 510km non-stop swim down the Yukon River in Canada. Swimming between Whitehorse and Dawson City, Edgley was not permitted to stop, sleep or touch the boat as per the rules set by WOWSA (World Open Water Swimming Association). The lowest water temperature recorded was 8°C (46.4°F), which is why to counteract the cold effect of continual immersion in water, he gained 15 kilos of weight by consuming 20,000 calories a day. In addition to the threat of hypothermia, Edgley had to navigate white water rapids, bears and wolves.