After Croatian freediver Valentina Cafolla lost an under-ice women’s distance world record she had held for seven years to rival Yasuko Ozeki last week, it took her only a day to wrest it back.
She dived over a distance of 140m on breath-hold using a monofin on 23 February, beating the Japanese freediver’s achievement by a cool 14m.
Cafolla had held the CMAS Dynamic With Monofin (Under Ice) With Wetsuit record of 125m since 2017, until on 22 February Ozeki topped that by a metre, covering a distance of 126m in Shiretokogo Lake, Hokkaido.
Cafolla’s immediate response came amid snowy conditions at Lake Anterselva near Bolzano in the Italian Alps, with a water temperature of 3°C. Her dive between ice-holes took 1min 40sec.
Not only that, but the following day she doubled down with a new CMAS under-ice dual-fin record of 80m.
Cafolla is training to compete at the CMAS Freediving World Championship, to be held in Belgrade in July.
Fastest wheelchair scuba dive
Meanwhile in the UAE the Guinness World Record (GWR) for fastest dive using a wheelchair has been claimed by Kuwaiti diver Faisal Al Mosawi.
It was his third Guinness record since the car crash that left the former footballer paralysed from the waist down in 2005.
Al Mosawi took up scuba diving two years later, and set his first two underwater records in 2018 and 2022. The first was for the fastest time under water over a distance of 10km, which he managed in 5hr 24min, breaking a record set by an able-bodied diver.
The second record was for fastest snorkel dive over 1km, which he achieved in just over 52min in the Maldives.
The 38-year-old’s latest record was set in public view at Dubai Aquarium, where he took 37min to cover 400m on scuba while seated in a wheelchair.
He said he had trained for four months leading up to the attempt. “This record is for every individual who refuses to be defined by limitations,” he commented. “Nothing is impossible,”
Also on Divernet: Bare-skinned freediver cracks ice-depth record, Molchanov’s 180m breath-hold – under ice, Ice-breakers: freediving records topple, Ice-freediver pushes 5m deeper
