Top freediver Mateusz Malina took the freediving world by surprise today. While all the eyes are turned towards Roatan for the 4th Annual Caribbean Cup, Mateusz Malina went after the existing AIDA World Record (281m set by Goran Colak) at the 13th Polish Pool Championships which are currently being held at Aqua Lublin in Lublin, Poland.
After a 4min 15sec dive, the Polish champion completed his surface protocol with great ease (reportedly in less than 5 seconds) and succeeded in achieving his 285m target for a new world record.
In an exclusive interview with DeeperBlue.com, Malina explains:
“I can say that I was very stressed before the dive. It has been 1,5 year since I have seriously attempted a World Record swim and I could feel my heartbeat being elevated more than normally .
3 weeks ago when I started my final phase of preparation I saw a chance of improving DYN AIDA record during the Polish championships, so I talked to the organizers about bringing the correct judge here to ratify a World Record performance. Luckily Petar Bojovic had time and decided to come. Not everything went perfect but I still managed to do a solid dive. It’s just a process of building up my performances for the Worlds Championships in Turku (Finland) and apparently it’s going extremely well.”
When asked about his current state of mind and feelings about the new record, he went on the explain:
“I’m feeling great, the dive felt ok and in full control until the very end. I wanted to swim towards a particular mark on the bottom which was at 285 and as soon as I saw it I just came up. I like to finish my performances knowing that I could do more because it works great mentally for me towards future swims as I don’t build any mental blocks and barriers, it’s just Limitless – a name I dedicated to my recently opened Freediving school. I’m looking forward for the last month of preparations and let’s see who will manage to push the limits further.”
We can bet that the competition will be fierce during the upcoming Pool World’s Championships in Finland. Meanwhile, the Polish freediving champion now holds two AIDA World Records. Let’s remember that Malina is also the current world record holder in Dynamic No Fins, with a 226m dive performed in Brno on November 11th 2014.
