best dives in the world

most of the divers of my generation have the same story, after luc beson's famous movie... "the big blue". we got interested in freediving. that was my situation too. that's how it all started for me one breath i am the current three time wold champion in freediving pool disciplines. something that no one ever did in the history of male freediving that means dynamic with fins, dynamic no fins and static. additionally, i hold 2 world records dynamic with and without fins.

the question i get most often is: what is your secret to success, or a shortcut to the same? but something like that does not exist. if you want to achieve something, there is only one way to do so... that is to work, a lot, more than others and to never give up on your goals and plans. if you have a vision, and if you are persistent in the pursuit of it, your success is inevitable. goran will walk uphill for about one hour at maximum speed considering the hypercapnic conditions he will endure during the climb he will breathe through a snorkel, that is duck-taped to have only a small opening the opening is really small, roughly 3-4mm

he will basically suffocate on carbon dioxide (laughs) doing so will simulate specific conditions for freediving. we call it, "dry training". in any case it's more pleasant to train outdoors if nothing else at least its beautiful. (laughs) the equation for success in freediving is extremely complex it requires a whole range of specific abilities both functional and motor therefore one must train quite diversely

people have this perception of freediving as if you just hold your breath, and that's it. but the sport is much more complex than that. we like to include different training exercises to achieve our training objectives. not only because it's effective, but also because it's more fun to do it that way we resolve all our problems and diferences of opinions beating up each other in the gym training is awesome, not just for the physical effects, but the psychological effects too. it is crucial for an athlete to have a good dialogue with his coach and i think we understand each other pretty well, and we get along well too

in the gym i often train with an hypoxic device i set the altitude at roughly 6400m i set it on that, as it's the highest setting and of course we want to have the workout as hard as possible (laughs) at that altitude there is roughly 50% of the normally available oxygen for example, if your oxygen saturation drops below 92-95% it will activate an alarm in the hospital therefore this is low (laughs) i have the most trouble during dry aerobic endurance training, it's crazy hard for me i prefer water, after all that's my playground

if we talk about the swimming pool, objectively, i am the best. i am world champion in all pool disciplines, and i hold 2 out of the 3 world records. no male freediver has done that so far in goran's case this is possible due to his abilities and work ethic you need to know him well he was always a little bit quiet and it was really hard to notice what he was capable of doing in this sport my long term goal will be to accomplish in depth what i've already accomplished in the pool that would be extraordinary

firstly no one has ever succeeded at the pool on such a level, and to combine that with depth... that would be something nobody has ever done, doubled (laughs) that's my big goal, and it is extremely hard but there is no challenge in doing easy things nikola tesla once said that when you can't find answers you should look to nature therefore we do the same we try to learn not only from our experiences but also by looking at nature and the wild kingdom we spend a lot of time together, talking about lots of stuff and we study the theory behind every single discipline and segment it into details

we even discuss chess, trying to find logic there i like to play chess i have the competitive drive to win, but also it also makes me calm and relaxed sometimes i play solo, to study opening moves and variations that might be unfamiliar to me. you are trying to see if your moves are sound, and if they work in a real game scenario training (laughs) often during lunch or dinner i watch game analysis from various grand masters my friends find that a little bit crazy, but i like it i play quite often, and i would like to be better than i really am

but i am where i am (laughs) i have a strong competitive drive, therefore it's not easy for me to lose a game not just in chess, but in any sport or challenge that might sound funny, but i have been known to lose sleep after i've lost an online chess game sometimes two nights in a row (laughs) for some reason, i must always win i'm not sure what the reason is for that but that's always been the case i think it was in 2010

when i won the gold medal at the cmas world championship i can't recall if that dive was also a cmas world record or not... but after the dive i was totally disappointed with my performance regardless of that i knew i can, i must, do much better i sat down and cried in the corner of the pool people thought something terrible happened, no one could grasp that i was just unhappy with my dive in my head it was alway important that i fulfil my expectation and goals i think that is the right way of thinking in the sport to compete against yourself and not look at what others will do

i don't care what others will do if i do things i think i can and i need to do if that's the case even if i don't win it's not the end of the world the problem is when i don't do what i think i am capable of, even if by some chance i do win well the first rule of freediving is to never dive alone someone always needs to safety you today tomo and tijana will be with me.. tijana's from belgrade, and tomo is croatian free diver tijana: we try to ask and learn from him in any way possible, to upgrade our level of diving

tomo: diving with goran is great experiance he is the world record holder and his results speak for themselves. so we're going to drop the rope at 70m, and once we are done we can check the maximum depth there it's always good to have someone to look at you and tell you what are you doing wrong especially in the sea, where you cannot see yourself someone needs to tell you, otherwise you will never know if something is slightly off so as much i help them with my advice, they do the same for me it's great that tomo is here with his small boat without it, we wouldn't be able to do anything

we train in conditions where we don't know what will happen tomorrow there are issues with the boat, engine, weather, equipment... so every few day we need to find alternative ways to train, something that makes sense but then again i achieve all of my results training on this way, so it can't be that bad during the dive you encounter some objective and less objective problems... doubts and insecurity can pop into your head that can be mentally hard this is not just an individual sport, but individual in the way that you are literarly separated from the outside world so every problem you encounter is there for you to resolve without any outside help

there are no timeouts when something goes wrong if you want me to tell you how it feels.. it's much nicer to dive in the sea than to count tiles at the bottom of the swimming pool this is much more enjoyable compared to hard pool training certain risk is always present but you always try to minimize it at the end of the day, this is an extreme sport if you want to follow usual sport classification so its not that unusual that a certain amount of risk is present but you need to make it reasonable and acceptable

statistically it is much more likely for me to die in a car crash than while freediving this pool is alway empty and the parking lot is always full.. unbelievable! 4x50m butterfly then the same crawl both with small fins then we can go with 4x50+50m fast with 50m diving back from the 50m wall water is specific media even though freediving is not swimming there are still a lot of things in common

the feel of the water, the way you move through water so you can not focus on just one thing you need to incorporate swimming into your diving so swimming is important especially to learn efficiency and develop water sensation at the end swimming is exactly that no rest on that wall, we can rest here for 10sec i think that freedivers before did not pay enough attention to swimming and swim like training also with regards to physical conditioning, i was among the first who started to train on that way

i worked with swimmers a lot in addition to gym workouts i think i have shown and proven how important those aspects are and that you need to incorporate all that into your training if you want to compete at the highest level the results are dependant on many things but something that will mess with my head in a way that i start question my motives and goals realistically is not that likely to happen perhaps if i am in a bad relationship because i am a bit emotional

so if something is wrong in a relationship that i care about, that might be a problem but except that, i can't think of anything i dont know what will need to happen to change my perspective and to change the way i think something can probably happen, but i just can't think of anything and nothing like that has happened so far of course it is nice to be in a relationship you care about and with someone who understands you and supports you but often that isn't the case

especially if you are doing what i am doing and you travel a lot that other person will have to have a lot of patience and understanding should be tolerant of me and to my mood changes before big competitions tolerant to my work and of the fact that i'm constantly traveling somewhere in preparation for competition you are often nervous and cranky i know that is not simple.. i understand that but it is what it is... im not searching for anything in a romantic way

or that i need to be in a relationship to be happy first you need to be happy and satisfied with yourself before you can be that way with someone these days i prefer sports autobiography books of the athletes whom i respect athletically lately i read those, or some popular science books or perhaps something about astronomy in regards to world championship and classical freediving disciplines they will not bring you any financial benifits it's all about the glory, and the glory isn't that much either

there are some competitions in freediving that can earn you some money the most famous is probably the competition in dubai where a local sheik organizes some kind of freediving that he deems interesting but the prizes are large, so everybody comes to try and cash in on years of hard training sadly, those kind of events are the only ones where you can earn a living from freediving guinness 02 world record attempt croatia guinness is more something to promote the sport, and attract some media attention that is why i did that record to at least try to make freediving more known to the general public

when you complete a big dive at the world championship and you realize that you have beaten the whole world and that you are the champion the intensity of that emotion is incomprable and it's hard for me to describe it in words latest dynamic world record 288m cmas in my case that emotion creates an addiction and everything i do, i do it for that 30 seconds if you train the most, more than anyone else then you will probably be the best

therfore i was always under the impression that i don't train enough (laughs) so just in case i train even more at the end of a day, i prefer to do something like sky watching over tv i always prefer to do something worthwhile and things i am interested in, like this watching planets and the night sky there is a saying in freediving probably the most famous one there are no limits

idea that has become almost the holly grale of freediving in our sport, we move the limits further, probably more than in any other basically in all disciplines, in depth and in pool that saying is something that is true in sport, but also in life, maybe even more than in sport you can achieve everything you can dream of, if you really set your mind to it