Shark Freediving

Sandi Bitenc

Sandi Bitenc from Slovenia is planning to break the current 24 hour dynamic freediving world record during the Lent festival on June 26 in Maribor, Slovenia. In short this means that he’s going to try to swim as far as possible underwater in 24 hours time.

Of course this is not an official AIDA discipline, but there is a small history of lunatics who dared to try this amazing performance. Current record holder is Andy Le Sauce with an underwater distance of 44 kilometer which he did in 2001 in La Reunion.

I did some number crunching and the most ideal schedule I could come up with is to try to do 1900 meters every hour, to be safe.  That’s 38 laps of 50 meters underwater. If it takes 40 seconds to do a 50 meter lap and you take 40 seconds rest, it takes 50 minutes and 40 seconds to do 1900 meters. So you can have 9:20 min rest out of the water every hour. Which you will need for sure!

Good luck to Sandi! Below is the complete record list of this exhausting discipline.

Dynamic Apnea for 24 hours
44km, Andy Le Sauce from France, December 2001, in La Reunion
40km, Andy Le Sauce from France, March 3/4, 2000 in La Reunion
35km 575m, Stéphane Francois from France, December 7, 1996 in La Reunion
26km, Jean-Francois Noël from France, March 13, 1993 in France
23km 225m, Francis Bruchini from France, May 21, 1991 in France