IRNA reports that Iran's top female open water swimmer Elham Asghari has set a new Guinness record, getting her name in the famous Guinness world record book for the fourth time.
The endurance swimmer set her fourth record by pulling a kayak weighing 15 kilograms, with a 40kg weight being inside.
It took an hour and 58 minutes for Asghari to swim 5 kilometers pulling the kayak and the weight inside it in the Persian Gulf waters.
By doing so, she broke the record previously set by British swimmer Nick Watson. He had swum 5 kilometers pulling a kayak with his son in it within 2 hours and 42 minutes in November 2019.
Elham Sadat Asghari (born 1981) is an Iranian swimmer who said that she has set an as-yet-unrecognized 20 kilometers swimming record in the Caspian Sea in northern Iran in June 2013.
Elham began swimming at the age of five and started to teach swimming at the age of 17. Asghari's childhood dream was to swim in open waters, and to achieve her goal she looked for training programs on the internet. Asghari's father worked as a wrestler, and encouraged her to register her records.
In Iran Islamic Sharia law is applied. The Islamic dress code imposes that women are required to cover their hair and body regardless of their religion and nationality. Moreover, female athletes in Iran are expected to practice separately from men; for swimmers this means swimming in women-only pools or in their own times. The only competition in which Iranian women swimmers take part are the Women's Islamic Games, as they cannot go to competitions abroad so they would not be seen by men while wearing swimsuits. To comply to the Sharia, Asghari came up with a special Hijab swimsuit that covered her body from head to toe, which in water adds 6 kilograms to the swimmer's weight.
In 2008, the Iranian ministry of sports recognized Asghari's 12-kilometer swim for her usage of the full-body swimming outfit.
According to Wikipedia, Asghari's problems with her performances began in 2010, when she decided to swim around Kish Island in three days, overseen by a representative from the ministry of sports. When Asghari had only swum 5 kilometers, police boats rammed into her and people around. She injured a leg and had her hip was lacerated by boat propellers.
The trauma made Asghari decide to stop swimming. However her family and friends encouraged her to return. After undergoing therapy, Asghari began to practice again, swimming 5 kilometers every night and running 12 kilometers daily.
On June 11, 2013, Asghari reportedly swam 20 kilometers going back and forth for 8 hours from 5:30 am to 2:30 pm in the Caspian Sea near Nowshahr.
