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Lydia Gard
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Marine Simonis
It's a gift.
Lydia Gard
Thanks, Anna. Anytime, Anna. The holidays are here and the best.
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Lydia Gard
You'Ll pay $25 a month unless you.
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Lydia Gard
Requires autopay. So good, so good, so good.
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Dave Mellor
Because there's always something new.
Lydia Gard
I'm giving all the gifts this year with that extra 5% off when I use my Nordstrom credit card.
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Gary McGrath
Enjoy.
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Lydia Gard
The observer.
Gary McGrath
I've been staring at pictures of that blue hole for my entire freediving life and dreaming about standing on that beach. It's almost like you're on stage. It's like you're in the bottom of an amphitheater. So it's a bit imposing in that way. But once you get in the water, the conditions are so perfect. It is the best conditions in the world for free diving.
Lydia Gard
This is a close friend of mine, Gary McGrath. I know him because we're both free divers, drawn to the depth by some strange tug on the soul. The amphitheater he's talking about is Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas. It's the home of vertical blue, the most pristine competition in the free dive calendar, our Grand Prix equivalent, or Wimbledon, if you like. Just underwater, holding your breath. Only the best athletes in the world get to dive there, the ones who are pushing the limit of what the human body's capable of. And these are our elite divers, world record holders, champions.
Marine Simonis
She just has to show the tag. There it is. And she has a bike.
Lydia Gard
Every July, they converge on this tiny Caribbean, an island with a simple goal to see how deep they can dive on a single breath.
Marine Simonis
Wow. Wow. Phenomenal.
Lydia Gard
If you've heard of freediving before, the chances are you've watched the Deepest Breath on Netflix. You've probably seen YouTube videos of people coming up from competition dives and blacking out. It's an extreme sport, but I remember the first time I watched a competition dive, and what I realized is that it's not an adrenaline sport. For a dive to succeed, the diver has to be completely calm and relaxed. The first couple of minutes, you do nothing but lie on the surface, breathing slowly and deeply. It's about achieving a stillness that we then carry with us under the water. Any thoughts, any noise, real or in your mind, are left on the surface. Then you submerge and there's silence.
Martin Petrus
I take one big full breath. When I submerge myself, I'm looking at the surface of the water from below, which is the most beautiful.
Lydia Gard
When you're under, there can only be one singular focus.
Marine Simonis
I close my eyes and then I just reflect on everything that's happening in my body. I focus on the feelings of my skin on my fingers on the rope. There's just that feeling of being present in the moment that I cannot experience anywhere else.
Lydia Gard
In those first 10 metres, your body is buoyant and you have to make your way down, either by kicking with long fins, by swimming, by using the rope to pull yourself into the depths. With your eyes gently closed, you assess the depth by the quality of the light. The darker it gets, the deeper you are.
Unnamed Freediver Expert
As you go down, your lungs compress because of the pressure, and then you lose some buoyancy. And then comes a point where you neither thinking or floating, you're just weightless. And this moment of the dive and even staying there, is something where I feel fully at peace.
Lydia Gard
One last kick or pull here will be enough to propel you down. This is when the most peaceful part of the dive begins, the free fall.
Dave Mellor
And at that point, you're just really sinking and relaxing and enjoying the speed. And it's such a nice feeling when it's effortless and everything's working.
Lydia Gard
By 30 metres, your lungs are reduced to the size of a fist. You're more dense than the water. You sink at roughly. Roughly 1 meter per second.
Unnamed Freediver Expert
And you know this feeling of the water surrounding you, maybe it comes from our development, but it's really something I enjoy a lot.
Dave Mellor
And then you hit the bottom of the line without even realizing it. You know, there was no anxiety in your thoughts about how deep you're going.
Unnamed Freediver Expert
Also, for people that go really deep comes something called the narcosis. You really experience some kind of high. It's a bit addictive.
Lydia Gard
And now the hard work begins. It's time to ascend. Let's say this is a hundred meter dive. There's now 100 meters of water above you. By now you've been submerged for around 1 minute, 40 seconds. That's 100 meters of work to get back to the surface, back to your breath. Deep divers often describe 100 meters as a spiritual depth. To get down there is impressive. To get back up again, the strength, focus and trust required is formidable. And on occasions that everything falls into place, we call that a beautiful dive.
Dave Mellor
Those kind of dives, I think what we all search for, those are the.
Gary McGrath
Ones free diving that I have to have again and again and again. That's three minutes of work on that actual dive. But you don't think about the year of work that's gone in beforehand. And it's that year of work that I love. It's that journey that I love. And to skip parts of that journey or to shortcut it, I would just wouldn't feel honest.
Lydia Gard
To me, that journey to achieve peace at depth is what captivates freedivers and keeps us coming back for more. And though it's a small sport, it's growing rapidly, attracting a wider audience, capturing the attention of the Olympic committee. But for a while now, rumors have been circulating that there are drugs that can shortcut that process, overcome the anxiety, override the body's warning signs to get you deeper. When I first heard the rumors, I was stunned. The idea of being 100 meters deep is already so intimidating. Why would you add more risk? So I asked around and I began to realize just how deep the water is. I'm Lydia Gard and from Tortoise Investigates and the Observer. This is deep water. Episode one depth wish.
Gary McGrath
In the beginning, I had to get over the nerves of being in a place like that. You're in the free diving church, it's like a cathedral. It's such a well known spot for us free divers and to actually be there, be lucky enough to go there and compete there, that was something I had to get used to. But once I did, it's just heaven.
Lydia Gard
In 2022, Gary McGrath dived to 112 meters at Vertical Blue. That's the same distance as 34 floors of a skyscraper. The dive took 3 minutes and 13 seconds, and when he returned to the surface, he had the British national record. Year after year, freedivers like Gary test the limits of human endurance to reach greater depth. And the same was expected the following year. In 2020, three world record attempts were planned, and the chosen few elite divers began to gather on Long island in the Bahamas. Except that year's competition will be remembered for very different reasons.
Marine Simonis
My name is Marine Simonis. I'm from Belgium, a freediver from Belgium, and I hold the national records from there.
Lydia Gard
That July, Marine Simonis steps off the plane at Deadman's Cay.
Marine Simonis
Today is going to be my sixth year of competing. I went straight into competition because I was like, okay, let's try to go deep. And that was it.
Lydia Gard
You have to understand, freediving is a relatively small sport, and the people who compete are just a fraction of the community as a whole. Maybe a couple of hundred people around the world compete in depth, and of them, there might be 50 or 60 divers whose lives revolve around the competition calendar. They travel between Kalamata in Greece and Dominica in the Caribbean, Ka in Turkey to Dahab, Egypt. But you don't just turn up and dive. You'd need to spend a few weeks at a competition site if you're really trying for a record. That way you can get your bearings and settle in. Your body can get used to the water temperature and something called the thermocline, which is an invisible layer in the ocean where the temperature drops, sometimes dramatically. And the divers train together, coach one another. They share Airbnbs for weeks, sometimes months, while they prepare for competition. They eat together, they sometimes even sleep together. But most importantly, they depend on each other for in water safety, the first rule of freediving, never go dive alone. Free divers literally depend on each other for survival. What I'm getting at here is that this is a close circle. We know each other. If globally free divers are a community and competition divers are a tribe, well, vertical blue competitors are something closer to a family. When Marine lands, the first thing she does is is message.
Marine Simonis
A friend asking her, hey, are you there yet? And she was like, yeah, have you heard about the big thing? And then she told me, and obviously in the first place, you're like, whoa.
Lydia Gard
While Marine was flying across the Atlantic, preparing for the days ahead, a drama was unfolding on Long Island. A riptide in what should be serene water. Among the athletes who have already touched down in the Bahamas, There are big names in the freediving world, some of them controversial like the Croatian team, they had big plans for this competition. One of them, Petar Klover, is aiming to challenge a world record which has stood since 2016. And when they arrive at Deadman's Cay Airport on 4 July 2023, after a long flight, they're met by the competition organiser. It's not a welcome committee. He's accompanied by the police and he asked to inspect their luggage.
Marine Simonis
She told me that there had been a big search on arrival the day before and that things were found in the luggage of the Croatian team.
Lydia Gard
Between them, the divers have three bags and what's found in them causes a storm surge. 33 different substances are found in the bags, one of which is banned by the World Anti Doping Agency, and other medications widely believed to be performance enhancing, not to mention potentially dangerous. The entire search is recorded. The news spreads through the community and WhatsApp chats are blowing up. Instagram is flooded with questions. The Croatian athletes at the centre of this are Vitamir Maricic, Petar Klova and Sanda Dilaia. And they're accused of doping.
Marine Simonis
The community in the first place is like a family, because we're all experiencing kind of the same stuff, being away from home for a long time and pushing our own limits, the limits of our bodies, and it has some difficulties. So we're a very strong family. And then this thing happens. And the thing that happens is really a polarization of the community.
Lydia Gard
For several months in the run up to the competition, rumors had been circulating about these athletes, about a corrupting influence that has entered the sport. And now, while there's recorded evidence, divers have arrived at a world record status competition with suitcases full of pharmaceuticals.
Dave Mellor
The real turning point, I think, for most people was Vertical Blue.
Martin Petrus
Heard about it when the Vertical Blue scandal appeared.
Gary McGrath
People who are with Vitamin PETA, and that's caused a lot of friction. So it's just a polarizing issue. I don't think it'll ever go away.
Lydia Gard
The search becomes known as the doping scandal and it splits the community. On social media, there were those who signed and shared a petition calling to ban them. Vitriolic Instagram and Facebook posts circulated calling the team cheats and liars, while others in their support focused on how the bag search was orchestrated, how the Croatian team had been singled out, how it looked like a setup. Why were they the only team that were searched?
Marine Simonis
I had a strong opinion in the first place. Then you realize that nothing is either black or white, just like in life.
Lydia Gard
The divers whose bags were found full of drugs publicly stated that the accusations of doping were false, unfair and unfounded. But something had changed in Freediving. Fast forward to today. They're still competing and winning world records. They're standing on the podium next to or in place of divers who signed petitions to have them banned. And as new depths are reached, competitors now look at one another with a level of suspicion. And it's prompted me to ask, if there is ink in the water, how do you stop it from spreading?
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Gary McGrath
Enjoy.
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Unnamed Freediver Expert
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Lydia Gard
Payment $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of network's.
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Lydia Gard
I didn't set out to bring these two parts of my life together. If anything, I've worked hard to keep them separate. Journalism is work. Free diving is my Sanctuary. Although I suppose I have one to thank for the other. As a travel writer, I was commissioned to review a retreat in 2022.
Martin Petrus
So in 2022, I was running a breathwork and movement retreat along with a friend in Andalusia in a place called Suryalila. It's like a yoga retreat center.
Lydia Gard
When I was invited, I wasn't convinced. The breathwork element of the retreat did not appeal to me. The idea of lying still fills me with dread. But it was a chance to reset. So I booked my flight to Spain, but I packed my running shoes just in case I needed to escape.
Martin Petrus
Freediving wasn't actually in the program of the whole retreat, but because of the fact that I just started freediving. And of course, every freediving diver needs to tell everybody else that they're a free diver and free diving is the best thing in the world. So I decided to tell all the participants about this beautiful practice.
Lydia Gard
Martin Petrus, who was running the retreat, was not at all what I'd expected from a breathwork coach. I had imagined this Instagram shaman, all hush tones and prayer beads. And then in walked this normal guy in jeans and a T shirt, a recovering graphic designer with an undercut and an orca tattoo on his forearm. I had no idea that meeting him would lead me here now. On the last day of the retreat, we ran to Lake Arcos for a swim.
Martin Petrus
It looked like a puddle, and I decided that it would be a great idea to do a static breath hold in that lake.
Lydia Gard
A static breath hold is exactly what it sounds like. The diver remains still on the surface, only their face, their airways submerged, and you stay like that for as long as you can on a single breath.
Martin Petrus
So that could be one of the worst places that you could try freediving. But still, you loved it.
Lydia Gard
I know it sounds like a strange thing to fall in love with. There's not much to it, really. Just holding your breath face down in a murky lake, just you and the air in your lungs. That first minute or so is frankly outrageous. It's a strange struggle just trying to remain calm when your body is literally crying out for you to breathe. But the urge to breathe isn't the same as being low on oxygen. It's just increased CO2. It's a physiological response. With practice, you learn to notice it and let it go. And then this stillness comes. As your heart rate starts to slow, you begin to turn your attention inwards to the sensations in your body, and everything becomes calm. You feel peaceful. I didn't realize it then, but this was my first real experience of mindfulness. And when I came up for air, I had this huge rush of endorphins. I felt ecstatic. I wanted to go again. My first breath hold lasted for two minutes. Martin seemed pretty pleased. I tried again and I reached two and a half, then three minutes, 20 seconds, and we both got quite excited then.
Martin Petrus
I remember you saying that you were doing something similar on your own, like just diving and pulling yourself down on an anchor chain. I know that you are very good in water.
Lydia Gard
Water is my element. I grew up on boats and beaches. My sister and I would compete over who could hold their breath for the longest. As we were ragdolled in the surf, I collected shells and empty bottles from the seabed. I never really thought about it. A lot of British freedivers come to this sideways from spearfish fishing. They get frustrated when they can't get deep enough for a catch and turn to freediving for answers. Around the world, there are loads of tribes and communities that depend on freediving for their livelihoods, like the Malaysian baojao fishermen or the Japanese Ama women. There's a sponge harvesting tradition in Greece called skandelopetra, where they dive head first, holding a big stone to pull them to the bottom. The point is, none of us knew we were free diving until we were told.
Gary Marshall
Okay, how's that?
Marine Simonis
Nice.
Martin Petrus
They look beautiful.
Lydia Gard
Yeah. Back on the surface, the quality of my breath has changed. I feel less anxious, less preoccupied by worries. I'm more connected to myself, stronger. That's the pull for me. I learned to surrender to the water, and it reconnected me to myself. That soul tug that I mentioned, that's what unites us. Well, that's what I thought, but maybe I've been romanticizing it.
Martin Petrus
With time, I realized that there is this strong competitive component to it, and a lot of people are really pushing. It's really peculiar because, well, the money is very low, so that is not.
Lydia Gard
The incentive for all the spirituality. Freediving is a sport. A sport measured in numbers, and where there's competition, there's ego. I wanted freediving to be this simple world I could escape into. But every conversation leads back to the doping scandal and what came afterwards. Everyone wants to know what's going to happen, and there are no clear answers. And I'm a journalist. I just want to know the truth. There's the boat. So we are in Mitticas. We landed last night quite late, late in Athens, and drove halfway here. Woke up this morning and finished the journey. And we're waiting for Dave and Mela. I can see the dive boat now coming in. They've just arrived, back from a morning's training. It's August 2025, and I'm in Mitikas, Greece, a tiny village set right on the water, only accessible by miles of winding mountainous road. And Dave Mellor is here training for the World Championship.
Marine Simonis
How you doing?
Dave Mellor
How you doing?
Marine Simonis
Good.
Lydia Gard
How was your session? This is the guy Martin put me in touch with, and he became my coach. As a multiple world record holder, he is my gateway into the world of competition, freediving. Why are you speaking up about the doping issue?
Dave Mellor
I don't like what it's doing to the sport. I don't like what's going on because, like, two years is. We're talking later. Is the sport in a better position now than it was two years ago? No. 100% not. Are more people using drugs of some sort? Probably, yes.
Lydia Gard
The doping scandal at Vertical Blue offered an opportunity to address a divisive issue that was corrupting the sport. And in the eyes of many in the community, that opportunity was wasted. And that has consequences.
Dave Mellor
Didn't realize at the time, I thought it's just some people are cheating to get results, but I didn't realize what impact that can have on the whole community, the whole sport.
Lydia Gard
So that's what this story is about, about a community that's a microcosm of society and how the fabric of that society has started to fray. In freediving, that corrupting influence takes the form of a group of people determined to push their bodies and the sport to the limit of what's possible. But it's not straightforward, because the medications that may help enhance performance in freediving aren't helpful in most sports. Many of them aren't on the World Anti Doping Agency's list of prohibited substances. They may be performance enhancing, but they aren't technically doping. And if people are taking them to dive deep, well, best case scenario, those divers will dominate the podiums, clean athletes will give up, and the sport's dead in the water. Worst case scenario, people will die.
Dave Mellor
It's kind of like the cartel. You want the Pablo Escobar caught, don't you? You know, maybe the thing crumbles a little bit or something. Done. There's no deterrent at the moment because nobody's getting caught. Nobody's even seen to be getting caught. And if someone does get caught, it's hushed up.
Lydia Gard
Coming up, in episode two of Deep.
Gary McGrath
Water, there was some performances that were making people think, wow, this person either is 1 in 10 million or something else is happening.
Dave Mellor
Part of what's wrong with competitive free diving how it's so open to abuse.
Lydia Gard
I got told that there was like a group that was forming and they were getting together to try to find a way to do something about it. Who was in that group? Deep Water is reported by me, Lydia Gard. The producer is Gary Marshall. Music supervision and sound design by Carla Patela. Podcast artwork by Lola Williams. Fact checking by Poppy Bullard. The Executive Producer is Basha Cumming.
Gary Marshall
Hello, it's Gary here. I'm the producer of Deep Water. Before I tell you a bit more about how you can listen to the rest of the series, we have a house notice you might have seen some changes to our feeds, and that's because we're now bringing our Tortoise Investigate series to you from our new home, the Observer. It's the world's oldest Sunday newspaper where you can listen to and read incredible journalism every day, seven days a week. So if you're enjoying this podcast, you can listen to all six episodes today by subscribing to observer plus on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. By subscribing, you get ad free early access to all our investigations and never miss an episode. Thank you for listening.
Lydia Gard
The observer foreign.
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Dave Mellor
Because there's always something new.
Lydia Gard
I'm giving all the gifts this year with that extra 5% off when I use my Nordstrom credit card.
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Lydia Gard
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Lydia Gard
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Lydia Gard
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Episode: Depth Wish | Deep Water Ep1
Host: The Observer (Lydia Gard, reporter and narrator)
Date: November 18, 2025
Episode 1 of "Deep Water" introduces listeners to the world of competitive freediving—a sport defined by its peril and beauty, where divers push themselves to go deeper on a single breath. Travel writer and freediver Lydia Gard investigates a doping scandal that has shaken this tight-knit community. Through personal narrative and interviews with elite divers, the episode explores both the allure and dark underside of freediving, as well as the consequences of cheating in a sport increasingly gaining international attention.
“It's almost like you're on stage. It's like you're in the bottom of an amphitheater. So it's a bit imposing...But once you get in the water, the conditions are so perfect. It is the best conditions in the world for free diving.”
— Gary McGrath ([02:02])
“It's about achieving a stillness that we then carry with us under the water. Any thoughts, any noise, real or in your mind, are left on the surface. Then you submerge and there's silence.”
— Lydia Gard ([03:24])
“[After the drug search] Instagram is flooded with questions. The Croatian athletes … are accused of doping.”
— Lydia Gard ([13:12])
“The thing that happens is really a polarization of the community.”
— Marine Simonis ([14:01])
“You want the Pablo Escobar caught, don't you?...There's no deterrent at the moment because nobody's getting caught. Nobody's even seen to be getting caught. And if someone does get caught, it's hushed up.”
— Dave Mellor ([27:06])
| Timestamp | Segment | Description | |-----------|---------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------| | 02:02 | Dean’s Blue Hole/Intro to the Sport | Emotional and spiritual pull of freediving | | 04:31 | Divers describe inner experience | Mindset, beauty, and physical effects below water | | 09:09 | First-hand account: Vertical Blue 2022 | Personal experience and challenges | | 12:07 | Arrival at scandal’s center | Immediate reaction to doping search | | 13:12 | Drugs discovered in Croatian team bags | Details of the substances and initial community split| | 15:31 | Community divides over doping accusations | Reflection on ambiguity and shades of gray | | 18:30 | Lydia’s personal freediving origin story | Her first retreat, meeting Martin Petrus | | 24:03 | Spiritual peace vs. competitive ego | Paradigm shift after scandal | | 25:33 | Dave Mellor on the state of the sport | Concerns over doping, escalation, and consequences | | 26:14 | Broader implications for the sport/community| Ethical and structural ramifications | | 27:06 | “Pablo Escobar” analogy | Failure of deterrence and transparency | | 27:29 | Teaser for episode two | Further investigation into secret efforts |
Episode 1 lays a gripping foundation, blending the serene beauty and existential challenge of freediving with the drama of a sport under threat. The doping scandal is not just a matter of rules, but of community trust and the very soul of freediving—the search for honest greatness, spiritual peace, and the limits of human capability.
Teaser for Next Episode:
Efforts by insiders to uncover the truth and the emergence of a group committed to exposing wrongdoing signal that the search for answers is just beginning.