By Patrick Koune
Born between the waters of Lake Geneva and the mountains of Haute-Savoie, Stéphane Tourreau has made freediving much more than a sport. World vice-champion in 2016, member of the French national team since 2011, he has been among the international elite for several years. In 2026, a dive at 145 meters Its depth has definitively secured its place in history. Interview:
Imagine the silence, the darkness gradually enveloping you, and the pressure tightening around your body. As the surface recedes, your bearings disappear. All that remains is your held breath, the control of your movements, and the ability to stay fully present.
It is in this extreme space that Stéphane Tourreau evolves. A universe where performance is not conquered through strength or haste, but through relaxation, self-listening, and acceptance of depth.
145 meters below the surface
At the end of June 2026, Sharm el-SheikhIn Egypt, Stéphane Tourreau reached 145 meters depth in variable weight with monofin, establishing a new world record Approved by CMAS. In this discipline, the freediver descends using a weighted device guided along a cable, abandons this weight at the bottom, then ascends on their own.
This performance comes just seven months after his AIDA French record à 141 meters, achieved at the end of 2025, also in variable weight. In just a few months, the Haute-Savoie native has thus crossed two major milestones, confirming an exceptional physical and mental adaptation to the very great depths.
The world record was nevertheless achieved after a preparation hampered by technical, logistical, and personal difficulties. Stéphane Tourreau had only completed three specific training sessions with the weight before his attempt. Once submerged, however, he recounts regaining great fluidity, good tolerance to nitrogen narcosis, and the feeling that his body had retained the memory of the dives deep accumulated in the preceding months.
This record is, in his mind, just a stepping stone. His next goal is now the... 156 meters, a brand owned by Alexey Molchanov in variable weight. A new attempt could take place in the fall of 2026.
A freshwater fish
Before becoming one of the world's best freedivers, Stéphane Tourreau was, in his own words, a "freshwater fish".
Originally from Thonon-les-Bains, he grew up between Lake Geneva, Annecy and the hills of Haute-Savoie. Nature was omnipresent, but it was during a family holiday in Corsica, around the age of ten, that he truly discovered the sea and underwater exploration: the revelation was immediate.
Underwater, he experiences a feeling of freedom and peace that he struggles to find elsewhere. As a child, he had academic difficulties and suffered from concentration problems. Freediving gradually offers him a space in which external noise fades away.
« Freediving allowed me to refocus. " he explains. What began as an almost instinctive experience gradually became a path of personal development. He started competing in 2007, before joining the French team in 2011. Since then, his life has revolved around depth, training, and traveling to the few sites that allow for vertical freediving in suitable conditions.
From Haute-Savoie to the tropical seas
Alpine lakes remain its original territory, but progression towards great depths requires reaching the sea.
After having long organized his training around Annecy, Stéphane Tourreau moved closer to Tenerife, then to the island of Dominica, between Martinique and Guadeloupe. These destinations offer accessible depths near the coast, favorable temperatures, and infrastructure capable of supporting challenging dives.
In Dominica, he makes numerous dives beyond 100 meters. This repetition is essential. It allows him to develop automatic responses, better understand his body's reactions, and approach depth not as an exceptional event, but as an environment that is gradually tamed.
Progression then becomes almost organic. Each dive provides additional information: on pressure equalization, muscle relaxation, the effects of nitrogen narcosis, or the management of respiratory contractions.
A patient ascent
Stéphane Tourreau's record tells the story of a progression built over time.
In 2016, in Kaş, Türkiye, he became vice world champion in constant weight with monofin thanks to a descent to 103 meters. That same year, he won the French championship and took third place at the Vertical Blue, one of the most prestigious competitions in the discipline.
He continued his rise with a third-place finish at Vertical Blue in 2021, followed by several international performances. In 2023, he finished fourth at the World Championships in Roatán, Honduras, with a dive to 115 meters. In 2026, he set a new personal best in constant weight with monofin. 125 meters at Deep Dominica
These results are all the more significant given that constant weight requires descending and ascending without changing weights. The entire distance is covered using only body strength and the monofin. Variable weight, the discipline in which he set his records in 2025 and 2026, now allows him to explore even deeper areas while developing a new technical approach.
Going down to better refocus
For Stéphane Tourreau, athletic performance is never separated from introspection.
In the depths, no distractions are possible. Emotions, fears, and tensions appear with particular intensity. The freediver must learn to observe them without letting them take control.
This experience now informs the conferences he offers to companies. He addresses breathing, concentration, stress management, and the ability to maintain clarity of thought in high-pressure situations. His goal is not to encourage everyone to descend to 100 meters, but to impart the mental mechanisms that allow them to thrive in extreme environments.
Freediving thus becomes a tool for transformation. By learning to slow their breathing and acknowledge their emotions, individuals change their relationship with stress. Depth acts as a revealer: it's impossible to cheat when the body is demanding air and the mind must continue to guide the movement.
Safety before performance
Despite his records, Stéphane Tourreau refuses to present freediving as a permanent race towards depth.
He advises young practitioners to first seek enjoyment and mastery. Progress should maintain a significant safety margin. According to him, it's not necessary to constantly operate at 100% of one's capacity. Working within a range of around 80 or 90% allows one to build confidence, improve technique, and protect the body.
This caution is essential in a discipline where mistakes can have serious consequences. Freediving is never practiced alone, and every deep dive requires a trained safety team, a suitable line, and a precise protocol.
True progress, therefore, is not only measured in meters. It is also evident in the ability to abandon an attempt when conditions are not right, to listen to the body's signals, and to accept that athletic longevity relies more on consistency than on risk-taking.
A sport where experience counts
Unlike other high-level disciplines, freediving can reward maturity.
Over the years, one can get to know their body better, refine their compensatory techniques, and build a more peaceful relationship with discomfort. Many practitioners start late in life and yet manage to reach an excellent level.
Early introduction can facilitate adaptation, but it is not essential. The key elements remain gradual progress, high-quality supervision, and the ability to avoid rushing the process.
At 39, Stéphane Tourreau exemplifies this unique relationship between experience and performance. His deepest records were achieved after nearly two decades of competitive practice, as the culmination of patiently built-up knowledge.
A consciousness of water
For the freediver, water is also a space for reconnecting with living things.
He readily evokes a form of communion with the natural element. Since the human body is itself mostly composed of water, immersion, according to him, awakens a particular sensitivity. It reminds us of our fragility, but also of our belonging to a larger environment.
This awareness fuels his commitment to preserving aquatic environments. After several trips, filming assignments, and explorations, he has directly witnessed the deterioration of certain marine ecosystems. He advocates for an ecology that begins with inner work: becoming aware of one's own sensitivity in order to better understand that of the living world.
His documentary projects extend this vision. With director and cameraman Mathias Lopez, he seeks to show the beauty of the deep sea, but also its vulnerability. Their collaboration has notably given rise to several films and series devoted to underwater exploration, mountain lakes, and the relationship between humankind and water.
ZRC, a watch as a diving companion
Stéphane Tourreau's story has also been linked to the watchmaking company ZRC since 2015.
As the brand relaunches its Grands Fonds 300 diving watch, the athlete is looking for partners who understand his sport and can support him in the long term. A meeting with Georges Brunet, head of ZRC, has led to a collaboration based on shared territory and a common culture of exploration.
Founded in Geneva in 1904, ZRC has a significant heritage in the field of diving instruments. Its Grands Fonds model notably equipped the mine clearance divers of the French Navy for several decades, before its reissue in 2015.
For Stéphane Tourreau, the watch goes beyond mere sponsorship. He describes it as a companion and almost a lucky charm. It accompanies him daily as well as on his deepest dives, subjected with him to the pressure of the great depths.
More than ten years after the start of their collaboration, ZRC remains its main partner and still associates it with its world of ambassadors.
Always deeper, but never against oneself
From his first dives in Corsica to his world record at 145 meters, Stéphane Tourreau has built a career guided by one conviction: depth is not conquered against the body, but with it.
Each descent is a subtle negotiation between willpower and relaxation, ambition and caution, technical mastery and surrender. As the light fades, the athlete is left to face himself.
His next objective could take him eleven meters deeper, towards the dizzying mark of 156 meters. But beyond the number, his adventure continues to tell another story: the search for a state of absolute presence, for that suspended moment where silence becomes a strength and where the exploration of the underwater world merges with that of the inner self.
Interview sponsor: SHOCK
