Long-distance swimmers: Next stage: Joseph Hess crawls in the Rhine towards the Netherlands

long distance swimmer
Next stage: Joseph Hess crawls in the Rhine towards the Netherlands

The long-distance swimmer Joseph Hess continues to swim. Photo: David Young/dpa

© dpa-infocom GmbH

Course north-west: An industrial engineer from Chemnitz has been swimming along the Rhine since the beginning of June. When will he reach his destination, the North Sea near Rotterdam?

The long-distance swimmer Joseph Hess continued his swimming marathon from Düsseldorf towards the North Sea.

On Thursday morning, the 34-year-old was taken out onto the river by boat from Düsseldorf’s Medienhafen. Then he climbed into the Rhine and started crawling. Hess was wearing a black full body swimsuit and swimming goggles. A canoeist rode alongside him in a boat. At the beginning of July, the industrial engineer from Chemnitz wants to reach his destination, the North Sea near Rotterdam.

He started in Switzerland on June 11th and then swam in the river for eight to ten hours a day. From Düsseldorf he wanted to cover a distance of about 40 kilometers on Thursday. “The current is a great danger,” Hess had said before the start of the swimming marathon. Added to this is the heavy shipping traffic on the river and pollution of the water.

dpa

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