Athlete Features
Aidan Buckle was always fascinated with swimming beneath the water rather than above it. After a chance encounter on a scuba dive with a humpback whale mother and calf up close at age 13, a seed was planted that would change his entire life.
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For Leena Oijala, freediving represents a perfect combination: the beauty and silence of the underwater world combined with the physical and mental skills required to explore its depths.
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At just 15 years old, Egypt’s Elias Amr Mamdouh is already on his way to a promising competitive freediving career. In his younger years, Elias experimented with swimming distances in the pool on a single breath. This favorite pastime led him to discover freediving a few years later, at age 14. During his first freediving course in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with Osama Jouhari, Elias found that while Frenzel equalization came naturally to him, breath-holding was especially challenging. However, he didn’t let that stop him, continuing to spend more and more time in the water practicing breath-holds until they became effortless.
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Alexey Molchanov, the co-founder of Molchanovs, has been making deep dives in international media. He was recently featured in international publications such as GQ and Men’s Health, and was interviewed by Sharyn Alfonsi of 60 Minutes. They covered topics such as Alexey’s deepest dive to 131m (430ft) in Constant Weight (CWT) at Vertical Blue 2021, his performance diving to 130m (427ft) at the 2019 AIDA Depth World Championship, fascinating details about Alexey’s past and upbringing, training tidbits, a background of the Molchanovs Education System, and the opinions of other athletes on Alexey.
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Jessea made a big splash in the freediving world shortly after her entrance into it almost 10 years ago. Born in Changzhou, China, Jessea moved to the US at 22 for her Ph.D. studies in Pharmacology and Pharmacogenetics. However, it was only after finishing her graduate degree and moving to Hawaii that she became inspired by freediving. In the middle of a scuba diving trip, Jessea stopped underwater to stare at freedivers moving gracefully below the surface and knew that it was something she must try for herself.
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