Croatian freediver Petar Klovar has finally broken New Zealander William Trubridge’s stranglehold on the AIDA Constant Weight No Fins (CNF) world record, with a 103m dive in the Egyptian Red Sea.
Klovar carried out the dive during the AIDA Freediving World Cup, held by the Freediving World Apnea Centre in Sharm el Sheikh. The week-long depth competition finished yesterday (27 May).
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Trubridge had appeared to have made the record his own. He first set a mark of 81m in April 2007 and, apart from a six-month interruption by the Austrian Herbert Nitsch between 2007 and 2008, had gone on to retain it until the World Cup event, going a few metres better on each of 10 occasions before leaving the record set at 102m in July 2016.
Klovar had looked likely to challenge Trubridge’s long-standing record at the 2023 Vertical Blue event held at Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas – a competition organised each year by Trubridge himself.
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Klovar and his fellow Croatian freediver Vitomir Maričić were however banned for alleged intent to use performance-enhancing drugs, after their luggage had been searched on arrival in the Bahamas. The accusation has been strongly denied ever since by both athletes, who claimed that it was unfounded and that there had been procedural irregularities in how they had been treated.
Afterwards the two Croatians had been banned indefinitely from Vertical Blue competitions, but after considering their cases AIDA had allowed both men to compete in its Depth World Championships later that year, with Klovar setting a Free Immersion (FIM) world record there.
AIDA’s decision led to a rift with the other freediving governing body CMAS, which supported Vertical Blue and announced that it would no longer co-operate with AIDA.
“We stayed focused, stayed quiet, kept working and let the results speak,” said Maričić, who acted as Klovar’s coach and cameraman on the new record dive. “This isn’t just a result. It’s justice. The record is finally where it should be. And it’s just the beginning.”
Klovar’s 103m dive now awaits official ratification from AIDA. The record is an absolute one: the CMAS CNF record was set by the Russian freediver Alexey Molchanov at 100m.
Also on Divernet: Finless freediver sets absolute world record, Tough conditions yield world freediving record, Doping violations: CMAS penalises Croatian freedivers, Doping controversy sparks freediving rift
