Georgia’s 76-year-old Henri Kuprashvili wins 6 gold, 1 silver at Winter Swimming World Championships

Henri Kuprashvili, a 76-year-old Georgian swimmer, claimed six gold and one silver medal at the Winter Swimming World Championships in Slovenia on Tuesday.

With his achievement in the 75+ age category, Kuprashvili has become the first Georgian world swimming champion in the country’s independent era.

The success follows the athlete’s breaking of a Guinness record last year in his crossing of the Dardanelles with his hands and feet bound, in the traditional Colchian swimming style.

In the effort, Kuprashvili covered 12 kilometres in three hours and 15 minutes, from the port of Eceabat on the eastern shore of the Gelibolu Peninsula, to the village of Kepez, located south-west from the starting point and on the opposite side of the strait.

Kuprashvili is also a historian and a Full Professor of Political Sciences at the Georgian Technical University.