About me

My journey

Freediving began while living in Menorca, Spain in my early 20’s. I purchased a speargun and started to try to catch fish. I quickly learned that in order to catch anything worth eating you had to be able to freedive. So I started to learn as much as I could about the sport, trawling internet forums and translating Spanish spearfishing magazines that sometimes had small articles about freediving competitions buried near the back.

I took my first course in 2006 in a cold quarry in England and was hooked.

Very soon after this I took part in my first competition. Fast forward to 2012, I qualified for the British Freediving Team and went to Nice, France for the world championships. I qualified again in 2013 for the worlds in Greece.

These experiences had me hooked and in 2014 I decided I wanted to be a full time freediver, I sold everything I had in London and moved to Indonesia to work at Freedive Gili, on Gili Trawangan. This was where I began to really develop as an instructor, certifying over 300 students in a year and gaining invaluable teaching experience.

I then moved to the island of Ibiza, Spain and worked with Freedive Ibiza, where I continued instructing and guiding people around the amazing underwater landscape of the island. Of course this journey wasn’t always a smooth one, after the intense teaching in Indonesia I developed chronic sinusitis and had to have a number of surgical procedures to enable me to freedive again.

To almost have my dream snatched away from me was heartbreaking and drives me forward in my work every day to help others realise their dreams of becoming better freedivers.

The global pandemic meant that work was scarce and prompted a move to the freediving ’Mecca’ of Dahab, Egypt where I am now based. This move, while temporary at first enabled me to train with more regularity, and my own freediving developed from 80/90m to taking the British National Record to 112m.

Dahab is a remarkable place, we have 92m depth just a 10m swim from the shore in the Blue Hole, no current and minimal waves, making it the best place to train freediving in the world.

In 2021 I felt ready to attempt the national UK record for constant weight. The record was standing at 111M. I had an excellent training period before hand, and had easily dived to 111m twice in competition pre-training. Day one of the comp and I announced 112m for my dive.

That dive was a bit of a disaster! Covid had other plans.

My freefall was messy and narcosis was very strong, I arrived on the surface a little over time and had to really fight to stay awake, but I didn’t black out! Sadly though, my fight took me too long and I was given a red card. Later that afternoon the Covid symptoms hit with force, 7 days in bed with aching skin and joints, coughing blood isn’t nice, trust me. The national record would have to wait.

January 2022 I decided to go to the competition of my dreams, Vertical Blue. The journey to the competition was far from smooth. The costs of this comp are extremely high, I would need some help. So after a few months of convincing from some amazing friends I launched my crowdfunding campaign. I would never have made it to the Bahamas were it not for the kindness and support of some amazing people.

On the way to the competition Easyjet lost my bag containing everything I needed to live and compete for the next 2 months. Monofin….gone, 2 wetsuits…..gone, Mask, snorkel, weights, supplements…..all gone! More than a year later and I haven’t received a penny from them.

At times like that you either crumble under the pressure or you rise up and use it as fuel, I managed to do just that, and honestly I dived the most perfect comp of my life, returning home with the British National Record of 112m.

In recent years I have moved away from teaching traditional courses and have focused more on developing athletes on a longer term basis. This is a better application of my skillset learned from my years of self improvement in the sport.

About me

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