Loic Leferme: Explorer, Adventurer, Freediver
Posted By Peter Scott on 28 December 2004
Loic Leferme’s entry into the pantheon of the greatest freedivers of all time is long overdue.
The no-limits master from Villefranche-sur-Mer has now bested the deepest mark claimed by anyone in an official record event with his dive of 171 metres on October 30, 2004. He is deeper than all the big names in no-limits freediving: Pipin Ferreras, Umberto Pelizzari, Audrey Mestre, and Tanya Streeter.
I first met Loic Leferme in Ibiza, Spain where he coached the French freediving team at the 2001 AIDA World Championships. In person, he is the antithesis of the burly Cuban and the tall Italian in physical presence and the trappings of celebrity. Leferme’s compact and slim physique is neither imposing nor overly athletic. Rather, he has the body of a man made to fit tightly on a sled, for the powerful rush of descent.
And, despite a new world record of 154 metres that same year, Leferme was already pushed out of the spotlight by Pelizzari, who was the anchor of the winning Italian team, Herbert Nitsch’s constant weight world record, and also by the hype surrounding the arrival of a quiet Czech freediver named Martin Stepanek.
An elite freediver’s motivation is a curious thing. Why do freedivers want to be the deepest in the world? Why do they risk the very real dangers of narcosis, decompression sickness, equipment failure and accidents that occur more than one hundred metres below the surface?
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