The most beautiful thing about diving is the freedom I feel underwater and that all-encompassing silence. The sound of the water is very calming. I don’t take my problems underwater with me. I leave all that on the surface and focus on diving -. Magdalena Solich-Talanda says, admitting that Luc Besson’s film “The Big Blue” was the original fascination of many current freedivers. Read about record holders and freediving records. Some really work on the imagination….
Matthew Malina
Each of us is looking for something in life that makes us happy and through which we find inner peace. Something that allows you to forget everything else and completely surrender to it. […] That’s what freediving is to me. For me it is an amazing journey into my body and mind. Freediving makes me happy Here and Now, ” Matthew Malina, a multiple freediving world champion and world record holder, AIDA freediving instructor and PADI EFR instructor, writes on his blog. Mat Malina is the first Pole in the history of freediving to become a world champion. The title was won by 25. June 2015, at the Individual AIDA Pool World Championships 2015 in Belgrade, aged 29. He won the DNF competition with a score of 214m. He comes from Ustroń, a small town where – when he became interested in freediving – there was not even a swimming pool, so he learned the basics from the Internet, watching instructional videos. At the 2019 CMAS Freediving Indoor European Championship in Istanbul, Malina achieved a distance of 316 meters in the DYN competition and – setting a new world record – claimed another gold medal.
Magdalena Solich – Talanda
She began her adventure with the pool as part of mandatory classes when she was still attending one of the high schools in Bielsk. At the age of 17, she had already started earning extra money as a lifeguard and swimming coach. She honed her swimming skills while studying at the AWF in Katowice, while also becoming a full-time lifeguard. It was there that she encountered the concept of freediving in 2014. This year she has just competed in the Silesian Barbour Cup in Rybnik, taking part in the competition of covering the longest distance with and without fins – she covered 120 meters without surfacing. The excellent result achieved at the DYN resulted in a call-up to the national team. She won her first world championship medal in 2015. It was bronze in DNF. She won two more gold medals at another World Cup in Finland in 2016 in DNF and DYN. She defended these titles in 2018 in Serbia – in Belgrade she swam 243 meters in one breath!
The boundaries are in the head ,” says Solich-Talanda. – If you think you can’t make it or you think you can make it, you are most likely right.
More records of Polish freedivers here
https://freebody.eu/rekordy-polski-we-freedivingu/
Herbert Nitsch
He can hold his breath for more than 9 minutes and has set a total of 33 world records, 32 of which are for all 8 recognized freediving disciplines, and the 1 “extra” record is the world record for the traditional Greek freediving discipline of Skandalopetra (this method of diving was invented by the ancient Greeks – it involved lowering and then pulling a person up on a rope to which stone weights were tied). On June 14, 2007 in Spetses, Greece, Nitsch set a world record of 214 meters in theNLT category, the most extreme discipline of freediving. Only six freedivers have dived over 170 meters (560 feet), two died trying. Herbert Nitsch is the only one so far to have dived over 700 and over 800 feet – 703 and 830 feet. Nitsch has worked as a pilot for Austrian airlines, and is also passionate about yachting. The media likes to refer to him as “the Deepest Man on Earth.”
Natalia Vadimovna Molchanova (Natalia Molchanova)
She first trained in swimming, but “retired” after giving birth. At the age of 40, she resumed training and abandoned swimming in favor of freediving. Her first competition in free diving was the 2003 Russian championships in Moscow, where she set a national record.
Molchanova was a Russian freediving champion, multiple world record holder and president of the Russian Freediving Federation. On August 2, 2015, she went missing on Formentera during a private lesson, and search efforts were discontinued on August 5 and she was pronounced dead. Molchanova was the world’s most successful diver in history. She held 41 world records in freediving and 23 gold medals. At the 2007 Freediving World Championships in Maribor, Slovenia, her STA winning time was better than the time required to win the men’s gold medal. She was the first woman to exceed 100 meters (328 feet) by diving with a fixed weight – she descended to 101 meters (331 feet) in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt (September 2009). She was also the first woman to dive through the Blue Hole arch in Dahab, Egypt, on one breath – she descended to 127 meters (417 feet).
Her son is also an accomplished freediver.
Alexey Molchanov (Alexy Molchanov)
Natalia’s son Alexy is a 14-time world champion (AIDA and CMAS). He holds 19 world records (12 records were set according to AIDA rules, and 7 according to CMAS), is a freediving instructor and promoter, president of the Association “Federation of Freediving”, president of AIDA Russia, director of the AIDA Russia freediving school. Natalia Molchanovs, designer of Molchanovs free diving equipment.
He won his first world record in freediving in 2008 in a pool discipline called Dynamic Apnea, in which he swam 250 meters underwater with a monoplane on one breath. Since then, he has focused on deep-sea disciplines and began competing in open water.
In 2012, he set a world record in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, diving to 125 meters using a monoplane. Later that year, Alexey broke his own world record, diving to 126 meters at Dean “s Blue Hole in the Bahamas, and at the 2013 AIDA World Championships he broke the record again. It happened in Kalamata, Greece, when he dived on one breath to 128m and returned to the surface in difficult conditions. He raised that record to 129 meters in Baja in 2016. In 2018 in the Bahamas, Alexey dived to 130 meters and set a new world record.
Guillaume Néry
He grew up in Nice, where he discovered free diving are 14 years old. He enrolled in a freediving club, and at the age of 19 he joined the French national team and began setting records. In 2002. became the youngest ever world record holder in free diving, by diving to a depth of -87 meters in the port of Villefranche-sur-Mer in the Alpes-Maritimes, France.
Freedom for me is diving into the heart of the ocean,” he says, and continues to set new goals for himself that go far beyond what he has already achieved. And he has five world records and five French records in his collection. Guillaume Néry played a role in Beyonce’s music video “Runnin’ (Lose It All)” / Naughty Boy ft. Beyoncé.
Eight freediving competitions recognized by the Association Internationale pour le Developpement de l “Apnée (AIDA):
depth competitions(the goal is to reach the greatest possible depth):
- CWT (Constant weight with fins) – constant weight, fins may be used; as of 2019, the discipline has a subcategory of constant weight in double fins (CWT Bifins)
- CNF (Constant weight without fins) – permanent ballast without fins; a diver submerges and ascends on his own strength without using fins, while the ballast used is permanent and cannot be discarded
- FIM (Free Immersion) – diving without fins, the athlete makes his way down and up by pulling himself up the rope with his hands
- VWT (Variable weight apnea) – variable ballast; the athlete submerges with extra ballast, which he leaves at the bottom and returns with his own strength using fins and/or a rope
- NLT – (No-limits apnea) – the athlete submerges with additional ballast, usually on a special structure called an “elevator”, and emerges in any way he or she chooses
pool competitions:
- DYN (Dynamic apnea with fins) – dynamics in fins; the athlete is to swim the longest possible distance underwater using fins or mono fins performing parallel leg movements as in a dolphin; from 2019 the discipline has a subcategory dynamic in double fins (DYN Bifins)
- DNF (dynamic apnea without fins) – dynamic apnea without fins
- STA (Static apnea) – static breath holding
