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Freedive record blown apart
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Austrian Herbert Nitsch has beaten his own No Limits freediving best by a stunning 29m, to set a new world record of 214m.
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Nitsch, backed by an in-water safety support team, made the dive off Spetses, in Greece. The dive was observed, and has been ratified by, the sport's governing body AIDA (Association for the International Development of Apnea).
No Limits, in which the diver descends on a weighted sled and returns to the surface aided by an inflatable balloon, is the sport's deepest discipline. Nitsch was under water for 4min 24sec, his maximum depth recorded by three dive computers.
Nitsch's new record puts to bed a niggling difficulty, in which his former 185m mark was the official AIDA world record - yet another freediver, Belgian Patrick Musimu, had dived to 210m outside the AIDA umbrella.
AIDA had the grace, while not officially recognising Musimu's dive, to acknowledge that it was genuine. In reality, Musimu was the world's deepest-ever freediving human.
Musimu's depth was undoubtedly the target in Nitsch's sights, which helps to explain why the Belgian chose to break his 185m AIDA world record by a massive 29m. By contrast, freediving world records are usually chipped away at by a metre or two at a time.
By any stretch of the imagination, Nitsch's achievement is remarkable. Sadly, however, his success follows the death, just two months ago, of fellow No Limits freediver Loic Leferme.
The Frenchman, a former No Limits world record holder, died while training off the South of France for an attempt on Nitsch's 185m AIDA mark.
Photo: Fred Buyle
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