Guillaume nery biography

“In order to keep my energy levels high as I dive deeper and deeper, I strive to cultivate my personal universe, my own private world in which I can take refuge to find strength and inspiration.
When I’m not deep diving, I spend my days high up in the mountains surrounding Nice, which offer me infinite energy.
I owe this love for big open spaces to my parents, who equally helped me develop a taste for personal effort and passed their love for the mountains on to me.

I love travelling around the world, discovering new and faraway countries. My thirst for travel comes from my childhood love for Tintin comics. I didn’t have the opportunity to travel much when I was a child, so freediving became an opportunity to discover hidden corners of our planet.

When my body is still, I let my mind wander… and very often think of the immensity of the Universe, which only reminds me how small and insignificant we are in this big maze. 
I also have a passion for photography, and enjoy capturing memories”. GUILLAUME NERY

Guillaume Nery grew up on the Mediterranean coast, in the city of Nice.

As a child, he used to go diving every summer with his mask and fins, accompanied by his father, to discover the wonders of the underwater world.
At the age of 14, he and a friend took up a challenge: to hold their breath for as long as possible. This simple game became an obsession and led him to one day meet Claude Chapuis, the founder AIDA (International Association for the Development of Apnea), who became his mentor.

Guillaume devoted all his time and energy to his passion. He made huge progress when working alongside Loïc Leferme (5 times No-Limits world record holder) both a role model and close friend.

In 2002, he became the youngest freediving record holder, by diving to a depth of -87m – using the propulsion of his fins alone. That marked the beginning of a great adven

Guillaume grew up by the Mediterranean Sea, in Nice. As a child, he used to go diving every summer with his flippers and mask, accompanied by his father, to discover the wonders of the underwater world.
At the age of 14, he and a friend took up a challenge: to hold their breath for as long as possible. The simple game became an obsession and led him one day to meet Claude Chapuis, the founder of the international AIDA federation (Worldwide Federation for breath-hold diving). He became his mentor.
True to the Nice school of diving, Guillaume devoted all his time and energy to his passion. He made huge progress when working alongside Loic Leferme (5 times No-Limits world record holder), who later became a role model, guide and close friend.

In 2002, he became the youngest ever free dive record holder, by diving to a depth of -87m using the force of his fins alone. That marked the beginning of a great adventure. Guillaume then beat the world record 3 times, became the world team champion in 2008 and the individual world champion in Greece in 2011, diving down to -117m.Nowadays, he dives until -125m of depth, the new France record.

As well as all the competitions and broken records, Guillaume teaches deep diving at his school, CIPA (in Nice), conducts training, is involved in business life and sets sail across the world’s oceans searching for new areas to explore.

However, it was thanks to the film he produced in 2010 with his partner Julie Gautier, FREE FALL, that the Frenchman’s career truly took off. One scene shows Guillaume walking on a seabed, towards an underwater chasm: the Deans Blue Hole (Bahamas), the deepest blue hole in the world. Suddenly, he jumps into emptiness and starts his free fall into the chasm.

In just a few days, these images had been seen all around the world, revealing a new, artistic and poetic approach to free diving.
Since then, the famous couple has carried out a number of other film projects, including NARCOSE (writte

FREE DIVER AND FILMMAKER.

France

Guillaume Néry grew up in Nice, France, by the Mediterranean Sea, and discovered freediving when he was 14 years old. At 15, he joined a freediving club, where he began to specialize in the constant weight discipline (wearing fins and without the use of a sled). At 19 years old, he joined the French national team and set a French constant weight national record of 82 meters (which also matched the world record at the time). The following year, he reached 87 meters in constant weight, becoming the youngest world record holder in the history of freediving. In 2004, Guillaume travelled to Reunion Island, where he set another world record of 96 meters. In 2005, while training for the first freediving world championships organized in Nice, Guillaume reached 100 meters during a training session. The same year, he reached 105 meters, which was Jacques Mayol’s last world record, set in 1983 in the No Limits discipline (going down with a sled, and coming up with a balloon filled with air). In 2006, he reached 109 meters. In July 2008, he broke the constant weight world record for the fourth time (113 meters). Two months later, with the French freediving team (with Morgan Bourc’his and Christian Maldamé) he became Team World Champion in Egypt. It was the first gold medal for the French Team in a freediving world championship. In 2011, Guillaume won the constant weight AIDA freediving World Champion title, in Kalamata, Greece, with a dive to 117 meters.

WHY I LOVE THE OCEAN:

The sea has always been my horizon even when I was spending more time going up in the mountains with my parents than being in the sea. Like many other kids, I enjoyed the Med in summer. I loved to dive down a few meters with my mask and my pair of fin, and grab some sand from the bottom. It made me feel like an adventurer. I love everything about being underwater. I like to explore the underwater world on breath-hold, because I am silent a