William Trubridge MNZM (born 24 May 1980) is a New Zealand world champion and world record holding freediver.
Trubridge was the first diver to go deeper than 100 metres (330 ft) without oxygen and as of 2013 held the world record in the free immersion and constant weight without fins disciplines. [1]
Trubridge was born in Northumberland in northern England, [2] but moved with his family to New Zealand when he was eighteen months old. [3]
As a diver, Trubridge mainly competes in depth disciplines. He has scored the highest number of points for an individual at the Team's World Championships, 313.3, which he achieved at the 2010 Freediving Team's World Championships held in Okinawa, Japan.
On 18 January 2011, Trubridge won the World's Absolute Freediver Award (WAFA), as the best all around freediver, with the highest combined score in six freediving disciplines: static apnea, dynamic apnea with fins, dynamic apnea without fins (pool disciplines), constant weight apnea with fins, constant weight without fins, and free immersion (depth disciplines).
Trubridge is an Apnea Academy instructor and as of 2013 [update] operated a freediving school and annual competition, both called Vertical Blue, at Dean's Blue Hole in Long Island, Bahamas from September to May. During the summer he teaches courses in Europe and has trained at the Tenerife Top Training Center.
Trubridge was the main subject of a documentary entitled "Breathe" directed by Martin Khodabakhshian, which documents Trubridge's pursuits in 2010 to become the first free diver ever to reach 300 feet with a single breath in the discipline of constant weight no fins. [4]
On 15 February 2019 Trubridge became the first man to complete an 'underwater crossing' of one of the major channels, swimming across the Cook Strait as a series of 934 breath hold dives. He wore fins and swam with a dolphin kick horizontally underwater at a depth between 3–5 meters, surfacing only for short recoveries during which he remained immobile. The crossing took 9 hours 15 minutes and was done to raise awareness of the plight of New Zealand's Hector's and Māui dolphins, which are both threatened with extinction due predominantly to over-fishing in their ranges.
In the 2021 New Year Honours, Trubridge was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to free diving. [5]
| Discipline | Result | Accreditation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time | STA | 7:29min | AIDA |
| Distance | DNF | 187m | AIDA |
| DYN | 237m | AIDA | |
| Depth | CNF | 102m | AIDA |
| CWT | 121m | AIDA | |
| CWT BF | CMAS | ||
| FIM | 124m | AIDA | |
| VWT | |||
| NLT | |||
| Team | 313.3pts | AIDA | |
Freediving, free-diving, free diving, breath-hold diving, or skin diving, is a mode of underwater diving that relies on breath-holding until resurfacing rather than the use of breathing apparatus such as scuba gear.
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Constant weight (CWT) is a freediving discipline recognised by AIDA, the International Association for the Development of Apnea, in which the freediver descends and ascends using their monofin and/or with the use of their arms without pulling on the rope or changing their ballast; only a single hold of the rope to stop the descent and start the ascent is allowed. Constant weight is one of the eight disciplines considered for international competition, the others being constant weight bi-fins (CWTB), constant weight without fins (CNF), static apnea (STA), dynamic apnea without fins (DNF), dynamic with fins (DYN), free immersion (FIM), and dynamic apnea bi-fins (DYNB).
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