Getting back from river late after swimming (9)
I believe the answer is:
retrieval
'getting back' is the definition.
(retrieval means getting something back)
'river late after swimming' is the wordplay.
'after swimming' indicates anagramming the letters (letters swimming round).
'river'+'late'='riverlate'
'riverlate' anagrammed gives 'RETRIEVAL'.
'from' is the link.
(Other definitions for retrieval that I've seen before include "Action of recovery" , "Salvage" , "Getting information from a file" , "Extraction of data from a file (computing)" .)