It all started in June 2013, when a friend of mine, who happens to also be a swimmer, came to me and at the end of an open water marathon which we organized, and said to me – “Ori I have a dream, I want to swim from Cyprus to Israel, and I want you to coach the team”.

I didn’t take him seriously and that that was it, but we ended up meeting a few days later, with the rest of the team, and before I knew it, it became more and more my dream. Soon we decided that we were not only going to swim this distance in open water, but that we wanted to break the world record in open water relay swim.

After training about 3-4 months, we head out to Cyprus, excited and feeling ready to achieve our goal. Unfortunately, we did not succeed. We realized we hadn’t trained properly, the waves were very high and we were worried we worried about each other. We also realized that we weren’t ready to do this as a team. After 3 days, we jumped back on the boat and head home.

The feeling of failure didn’t allow us to give up, and the dream we still pounding in our veins. So we all sat down, and decided that we are not giving up on our dream and we are going to do it, but we have to do it right in order to succeed.

Throughout the entire year, we trained in tough conditions, in cold water, in high waves, spent hours out in open sea, we got to know each other on a different level, we really bonded and grew stronger as a team.

The more time we spent together and the more time we spent training, we became more and more eager to hold the world record, and in October 2014 we went for it. We swam from Cyprus to Israel, 377 kilometers and the dream came true, and we broke the world record in 6 relay open water swimming.

A few days after we returned from our journey, still feeling the excitement and adrenalin of success, I received a call from TEDx. He was interested in the story, and invited me to give a speech on the international stage in Cyprus.

I couldn’t believe it. For years I have dreamt to stand on the TED stage and talk in front of people from all over the world and sharing and spreading my words globally. I was very excited and satisfied that achieving one dream lead me to conquer yet another one in such a short period of time.

Ted Nicosia is one of the greatest life experiences. It started with an initial conversation with a guy named Paul who was also responsible for global Ted and assisted with the training of lecturers for Ted Nicosia.

Of course I was very excited. The preparation process to lecture at Ted is pretty crazy. It’s a very emotional process that requires working on the English as well as working on the message itself that you want to share with the world.

My message was “The Power Of The Team”, and it was amazing.

[widgetkit id=6012]