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The dreadful (and unnatural) toll of freediving

Adam Skolnik tries to fathom what makes people risk their lives in this pitiless sport

30 January 2016

9:00 AM

30 January 2016

9:00 AM

One Breath: Freediving, Death and the Quest to Shatter Human Limits Adam Skolnik

Corsair, pp.312, £20, ISBN: 9781472152022

In principle, freediving is simple and perilous: divers take one breath, then dive as deep as they can, with no tanks or air, and come back up again. Watch a video of this — or Luc Besson’s 1988 film The Big Blue — and you have to hold your own breath, because it is beautiful, streamlined, pitiless: a human in the most powerful and unnatural element for humans.

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