On 30.05.2010 Guillaume Néry published on his YouTube channel the video “Free Fall (Base jumping at Dean’s Blue Hole)”.
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At the moment when I write these lines, the film has had more than 26 million views, and, since the time of the epic duels between Maiorca and Mayol, that were followed by the rivalry between Pelizzari and Pipin, freediving has not had this much visibility. Newscasts, commercials, film festivals, social networks: Guillame’s video brings freediving out of a restricted circle of professionals and gives it a new connotation, or a new skin. Until then freediving, for those who were not practicing it, was perceived as a discipline for people a little out of their mind, people who were pushing their limits beyond human boundaries, or like some supermen chasing each other to set new records. Guillaume and Julie made it modern, cool and attractive; they showed something that goes beyond performance, and they did it in a beautiful, unreal and dreamlike way. People were totally fascinated by it, and the way to recreational freediving was cleared.
If there is a character that freediving needs, it is Guillaume Néry. In addition to being one of the deepest and most elegant freedivers in the world, he is also, let’s say it, a heartthrob: a handsome, dreamy and bold guy, he gives you the idea of being a person with whom you would gladly drink a beer together. But, for the writer of this piece, his greatest merit goes beyond his sporting achievements, because Guillaume manages to show and tell the hidden and deeper side of apnea, whatever goes beyond the simple technical gesture or competition, something that every freediver seeks and experiences when they are in deep waters: that beauty and communion with nature that we experience when diving into the depths of the sea.
In this book you will not find the secrets on how to become like Néry: there are neither detailed explanations on how to make the Mouth-Fill nor any training tables to inspire you. This is not what Guillaume intends to tell us. Instead, he speaks to us about his life and his way of seeing and doing apnea, and he does so by taking us along a path as fascinating as those of the mountains he loves to climb, which unfolds through memories, friendships, rituals and technical gestures, practical advice, love for his family, the physiology of immersion, his ego, his doubts and his fears.
“The great depths reveal the soul of each one of us”, and Guillaume shows us his in a way that is more like a chat with a friend than a structured text. The book flows easily, Néry tells us everything about himself, sometimes in a chaotic, but always sincere and direct way, so that once you get to the end, you do miss the voice of his thoughts.