Q&A: Sara Campbell

The UK's greatest freediver on the secrets of the deep

“The deeper you go, the more the pressure increases but it just feels like a big hug. It's actually very pleasant.” It’s hardly the image most of us conjure up when we imagine ourselves deep below the sea in dark, crushing pressures that turn your lungs to the size of a fist. That would explain why more of us aren’t freedivers like Sara Campbell: athletes who plunge to incredible depths with no more air than they can carry in their bodies. The above quote is how the 37-year-old described the sensations she experienced during her world record dive this April, off the coast of Long Island. Descending to 96m, she regained her title as the greatest female freediver of all time, a feat made more incredible by her brief career: only four years ago, she was a stranger to the sport. WideWorld met up with ‘Mighty Mouse’, a legend in the making, to talk about the depths, the science and the drive to win.

Just how fierce is the competition between rivals?

Very fierce. We have to be. There’s no discipline where one athlete is out there on their own, though the women’s sport was going that way until I came along. Natalia Molchanova held all six world records, and there was a Canadian diver Mandy-Rae Cruikshank who held a few world records over the years. She set the record at 88m, and I gave her a big old shock, particularly because I’d only been doing it for nine months!

That’s a fast rise to the top, Sara. How did an ex-PR from Wandsworth end up a world champ?

I moved to Dahab on the Red Sea about four years ago. I got fed up of London and I fell in love with this place on the sea, so I was there teaching yoga when a student noticed my capacity for breath control – knowing I loved the sea, she suggested I give freediving a go. My flatmate had suffered a lung squeeze doing it, so at first I thought, ‘What a stupid sport, why would I want to do that?’

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