First it was a game, and from that game a passion arose. From that passion, Valentina Cafolla became a world-record holder in freediving.
Initially diving in Croatia’s southern sea — the Dalmatia — with her friends as a five-year-old, Cafolla discovered her love for underwater simply by having competitions to see who could dive the deepest or find the best shell from the seabed.
As an eight-year-old, she went with her father, a former professional spearfisher with the Croatian national team, and was unable to get to 17metres below the surface, much to her disappointment.
However, this failure was the start of something special.
‘While dad was spearfishing, I tried to reach the depth of the rock he was diving to, which was 17m,’ she says. ‘At the time, I was eight years old and couldn’t reach it.
‘Just as I was about to give up, he swam over to me and pointed his spear gun at something. It was an amberjack.
Valentina Cafolla celebrates her world-record dive of 140 metres at Lake Anterselva in February
Cafolla says she loves the calmness of freediving, which allows her to be alone under the water.
‘I was so mesmerised by its colour and size that from that moment on, I wanted to go two metres deeper than my age each year to discover the beauty that the sea has to offer.
So, at the age of eight, I was diving to 10m, and at 10 years old, I was freediving to 12m.
‘By the time I turned 14, I had reached a depth of 33m. When I was 16 years old, I reached a depth of 45m, which was the deepest point in the Rovinj archipelago.’
Whilst freediving seems simple in theory, it is anything but in practice. There are three components in which divers compete — depth, length and static.
In both depth and length — also known as dynamic — a pre-determined distance is decided upon by the competitor which they must reach for their attempt to count.
Static, however, is more about holding your breath underwater for as long as possible.
The road to the current world record — diving 140m below the ice of Lake Anterselva in Italy — was long.
Having initially set the record in 2017 at 125m for a woman, Cafolla reveals that she was too young to understand fully the magnitude of her achievement, confessing to being too distracted.
From there, the Croat took up finswimming — a more physical sport where you are competing to be the fastest.
After five years, including time with the Croatian national team, Cafolla returned to free diving in 2022 with setting a new world record in her mind.
Cafolla trained for two years so that she was fully prepared for extreme conditions under the ice
In February earlier this year, the 27-year-old took to Lake Anterselva to make history once more.
‘I trained for two years for this, even though I had also done some hard training before for the extreme conditions I would have under the ice (training in winter with a 3mm suit with holes, heavy gym training, and difficult freediving sets),’ she says.
‘I arrived at the lake on February 19 to get acquainted with the lack of oxygen on the lake and how the lake is situated 1600m above sea level.
‘The next few days, my team from Adriatic Maritime Services and Croatia Apnea prepared my competition field. On the 21st, I entered the water and did my training.
My team, which also included my dad and my brothers, did a great job of not making me stressed for the event.
‘The night before the world record, I went to bed early and started scrolling through Instagram. That’s when I discovered that on that same day, a Japanese freediver had broken my previous world record from 2017 by 1m.
‘I was overwhelmed by this discovery. On the one hand, I was happy that someone had broken my record, but on the other, many doubts started emerging, some of which I wasn’t even aware I had.
‘As a result, I fell asleep at 2am and woke up quite early. Normally, before freediving competitions, I listen to some calm music. This time, however, Eminem’s Lose Yourself and Not Afraid were on repeat.
‘When I arrived at the field, I was so calm that I was surprised by it in the end. I reached a distance of 140m and completed the surface protocol.
The next day, I also did the first world record for dynamic in bifins (two fins) under ice (at 80m).’
Now with two world records under her belt, there are no current plans or goals set.
Having missed the freediving world championships in April after a bout of chickenpox, and an admin issue with the Croatian federation for which Cafolla is still seeking answers, for now she is happiest in the warm seas of Croatia.
‘Right now, I’m diving in just in warm waters and mostly pools,’ she says. ‘No (I don’t do it for the adrenaline rush), actually it is completely opposite. I just love the calmness I feel when I freedive. You are completely alone under the water and you can understand yourself better.’