Double freediving record: Alexey Molchanov's challenge in the blue

Double freediving record: Alexey Molchanov's challenge in the blue

The Russian athlete Alexey Molchanov has established two new world records diving down into the depths of Dean's Blue Hole, a marine sinkhole more than 200 meters deep in the west bay of Clarence Town in Long Island, in the Bahamas.

This is where the Vertical Blue, an important world competition organized by the freediving champion William trubridge, and it is here that Molchanov broke all previous records in free diving (FIM) and constant weight (CWT).

Alexey Molchanov, extraordinary double freediving record

In 'free diving apnea the descent is long, but the ascent is interminable. As usual, Alexey Molchanov slow down to around 50 meters to have better control over the oxygen reserves that will carry it out of the water.

The first depth assistants meet around 40 meters, when a little light from the outside world returns to filter. Reached 9 meters you have to climb very slowly, making the necessary decompression stops. The Deepest Man on Earth, as they call him, has done it again: he broke another record in free diving, reaching a depth of 133 meters in four minutes and 42 seconds.

Molchanov's feat at Vertical Blue does not stop there: the following day, 23 July 2023, the Russian athlete also breaks the record in constant weight with monofin (CWT), touching 133 meters here too. The previous record he had just set himself a few months earlier, in Villefranche-sur-mer. Same depth.

The Russian athlete he also tries a third feat in constant weight without fins, where it is a question of snatching the title from the hands of the landlord William Trubridge, holder of 18 world records. In the end, the great competition in Dean's Blue Hole closes with two new world records and two performances that do justice to the fame of thestrongest freediver in the world.

Free Immersion Apnea (FIM): Down 133 meters

Il new apnea record in free diving (or FIM, Free Immersion Apnea) is of 133 meters. Molchanov reached this depth in the dark of Dean's Blue Hole in under five minutes, 4 minutes and 42 seconds. Molchanov always goes down head firsthead, hands on the guide wire – a permitted practice in this specialty.

La discipline of free diving is among the most fascinating: it is not just about reaching the declared depth by the athlete, but to do it without any kind of help. No fins, no additional weights.

"After re-emerging on the surface, during the count of 20 (twenty) seconds", reads the FIPSAS Regulations, "the athlete must complete the Surface Protocol (give the OK Sign, the conventional underwater signal of two fingers making a circle) in the direction of the Chief Judge”. When he gives the ok sign, Molchanov knows that he has accomplished a historic feat.

Molchanov wins again in constant weight (CWT)

Alexey Molchanov, 36, kept the world record in constant weight freediving for 11 years: the series was only interrupted in 2022, when the title temporarily passed into the hands of the Croatian athlete Petar Clovar, who reached 132 meters at the CMAS Freediving Outdoor World Championship.

Molchanov that year could not participate in competitions: all Russian and Belarusian athletes were excluded from competitions at the formal invitation of the Olympic Committee. But as soon as he can go back to racing with the monofin, The Machine he returns to being the man of the extreme depths.

On the starting lines of the CWT competition at Vertical Blue 2023 there is also the Italian freediver David Carrera, who scored a new national record descending to 130 meters. The Italian is among the few in the world who can compete with the Russian athlete, son of the legendary Natalia Molchanova, who died dramatically during a dive in 2015.

Constant weight with double fin (CWTB): the World Record to Arnauld Jerald

Constant weight freediving can be done with fins (CWT) or without (CNF): Molchanov travels on a monofin, but there is no shortage of athletes who prefer the double fins, so much so that in 2019 AIDA decided to officially recognize the specialty ofconstant trim with bifins (o CWTB extension, Constant Weight Apnea with Bi-fins).

It is the discipline of the young Frenchman Arnaud Jerald, who at Vertical Blue 2023 snatched the CWTB world record from Molchanov by reaching 122 meters of depth with its ultralight carbon fins.

Before freefall, Jerald's eyes-closed descent is hypnotic: the alternating movement of the fins it has the delicacy of an impalpable mechanism. Jerald reaches the card with the declared depth in 105 seconds. He veers, and begins the long ascent in the crystalline darkness of Dean's Blue Hole. Is the first time that a human being reaches 122 meters with bifin.