Some of the world’s best underwater athletes continuously attempt to attain greater depths, times and distances on a single breath of air in a variety of breath holding competitions.

That dangerous sport is called free-diving, and just recently, two new and very spectacular world records were broken (again), setting new boundaries for the next danger zone.

Amazing Figures…
Amazingly, the total distance travelled underwater without fins for two completely different disciplines - diving vertically (back and forth - 166 m) and “swimming” horizontally (186 m) - are very comparable…

…they only differ by 20 meters!

Going Vertically…
On August 8, 2007, Martin Stepanek set the freediving world record (constant weight without fins) to a depth of 83m (272ft).

That’s a travel distance of 166 meters in total - or 3:28 long minutes - without taking a single breath: 83 meters one way and 83 meters the other way. Pretty amazing!

This record dive was accomplished at the Sony “Free Like No Other” event In Dahab, Egypt. Watch that video…



Going Horizontally…
“Dynamic apnea without fins” is another free-diving discipline where freedivers try to swim the furthest possible distance underwater horizontally (without breathing of course).

The current world record is 186 meters and was set by Danish freediver Stig Aavall Severinsen on July 7, 2007 in Maribor, Slovenia. A Real Media Video of that event is available on this page. (P.S. If anyone knows how long Stig stayed underwater, please let me know. Thanks!)

The next video shows previous record holder Tom Sietas (180 m) during a practice run of 166 meters. (At this time, Tom Sietas prepares himself to break the current 186 meter world record.)