Jimmy Graham’s post-football plan: Row across the Arctic Ocean

It doesn’t look like Jimmy Graham will be playing for the New Orleans Saints again in 2024, but you never know. He was a surprise addition to the training camp roster last summer and showed he can still play — but his ambitions for the future are bigger than football. Known as an avid aviator, Graham has now explored a passion for traveling the world by sea.

Graham announced Monday that he’s preparing for “The Arctic Challenge,” an endurance rowing project which will travel across the Arctic Ocean in July 2025, pursuing a world record by rowing 1,000 miles inside the Arctic Circle. Graham is the team’s lead navigator.

“Using this challenge to inspire young people is very meaningful for me,” Graham said in a statement from the organization. “As someone who has experienced homelessness, I recognize the importance of not letting your circumstances define your future. Through this challenge, we will showcase the power of determination, teamwork and resilience, and I am thrilled to use it as a platform for empowering kids to pursue their wildest dreams.”

He is part of a four-person rowing team planning to set out from Tromsø, Norway and travel to Longyearbyen in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, aiming to break the speed record set in 2023 of 15 days, 5 hours, and 32 minutes. Graham and his teammates will spend a year and a half training for the challenge.

It sounds like the experience of a lifetime. The Arctic Ocean is one of the last frontiers — fewer people have rowed across it than those who have walked on the moon. It’s home to a variety of wildlife: seals, seabirds, polar bears, and elusive narwhals and beluga whales among them. Weather conditions and temperatures can be highly variable as the climate changes, and the Arctic Ocean that Graham and his team plans to traverse may look drastically different from the one their grandchildren may live to see. We’ll be keeping an eye on his progress.

Story originally appeared on Saints Wire