Champion freediver William Trubridge this past weekend set a new world record for endurance swimming underwater by completing a distance of nearly 51.6 kilometers/32 miles in a pool in Nassau, Bahamas.
In total, Trubridge swam 51,575m/169,209ft underwater on a breath hold, with no propulsive assistance. The distance was swum as 2,023 underwater laps of a 25m pool.
The attempt was to promote awareness about the mental health crisis facing the world today, and to announce the imminent launch of The Mental Immune System, a video series and method created by Trubridge that programs the subconscious mind with tools that help move past anxiety, stress and depression. Preregistrations are now open, and the system will be released in full in the next two weeks.
Billed as an attempt at an “Underwater Marathon,” Trubridge’s first goal was to break the current world record of 26.35km/16.37 miles, with the idea of trying to challenge the 42.2km/26-mile marathon distance. When he reached this mark still with four hours remaining, Trubridge went for 50km/31 miles, eventually going 23 laps past that distance, to finish with the number of laps of the coming year: 2023.
Trubridge says he hopes to make the coming year the one that “we turn the tide on the mental health crisis, and learn to develop personal immune systems to the negative thoughts and emotions that assail us, in the same way that our bodies are born with immune systems to counter physical pathogens like viruses.”
Check out the livestream footage of the attempt on Trubridge’s YouTube channel.
(Featured Image credit: Andre Musgrove)
