Very few things which are really worth achieving come easily. Sometimes they do, but most of the time you really have to work hard and cleverly.

I got bored and then joined the British SAS. It was five very exciting years of my life, and then I'd always had this passion for swimming, so started swimming around the world, in some of the most exotic and distant and dangerous locations.

We have to appreciate that we are part of nature, we must work with nature; the environment is our lifeline.

I had a dream , okay, go do a swim off Antarctica, and I'd train in Gauteng and just dive into the sea off Antarctica... You've really got to do a simulated test as best you can in South Africa before you go off.

Sometimes we set boundaries for ourselves in life, or even worse, we allow others to do so. In many cases, these boundaries are just in our mind and need to be pushed away.

I've seen some glaciers in the world which have been, which are just turquoise blue blue glaciers up in the Arctic. It's tragic to think that because of climate change, because of man's actions, they're melting away.

I love swimming, swimming's my passion and I hope I swim until the last day of my life, so I really, really do enjoy swimming, but swimming for me is simply a way of carrying a message.