Valentina Cafolla

My name is Valentina Cafolla, and I am an athlete with dual citizenship – Croatian and Italian. I was born on May 14, 1997, in Pula and spent my entire childhood up to high school in Rovinj. I’m currently finishing my degree in Kinesiology in Zagreb, which has allowed me to train and compete at the highest level. From a young age, I showed curiosity for freediving and the sea, and soon I started diving deeper and deeper. At the age of fifteen (in 2012), I learned scuba diving. Today, I hold instructor certifications for scuba diving (SNSI and SSI OWI). In 2016, at the age of 18 and with the support of many enthusiastic friends, I attempted my first freediving under-ice record and swam 111 meters, setting a new world record. Unfortunately, due to some technical oversights on the organizer’s side, the record was not officially recognized. After that experience, I began improving my swimming techniques with a monofin. A year later, in 2017, we organized my second record attempt. That year, I achieved a distance of 125 meters, which became the first-ever women’s world record in dynamic freediving under ice. This record was recognized by CMAS, the world’s governing body for underwater sports. A month after breaking the record, I competed at the Croatian National Freediving Championship in dynamic discipline and took second place. That same year, I enrolled at the Faculty of Kinesiology in Zagreb. Since 2018, I’ve been a member of the Croatian national finswimming team. That year, I participated in my first Finswimming World Championship in Belgrade, and also competed in three World Cups, earning a 7th-place finish in one of them. I also competed at the Italian National Championship, where our 4×200 m relay team set a new national record. Thanks to those results, I was awarded the Bronze Medal for Sporting Courage in Rome. In 2019, I was invited as a speaker at TEDxTUM in Munich, where I shared my personal story from the 2017 world record experience. In 2021, I competed at the Finswimming World Championship in Tomsk, where I placed 12th in the 200 m discipline, earning the second-level sports categorization in Croatia. Just a few months later, at the National Championship in November, I won over six first-place titles. In 2022, I qualified for the World Championship in Cali, Colombia, where I had the third-best time among both male and female swimmers. Unfortunately, the Croatian Federation decided to fund only two athletes, so I wasn’t selected to go. Disappointed, I decided that this would be my final season as a competitive finswimmer. In April 2023, I swam at my last national championship, where I took third and second place in two different disciplines. In October 2022, I returned to my first love – freediving – and quickly began achieving serious distances in the pool. My first Freediving World Championship took place in 2023 in Kuwait, where I placed 5th in the Endurance 4x50m discipline and set personal bests in two other disciplines. After a long break, in 2024 I returned to the ice at Lake Anterselva in Bolzano, Italy, at 1600 meters above sea level. On February 23rd, I reclaimed the world record in under-ice freediving with a distance of 140 meters. The very next day, I set a new world record in under-ice freediving with bifins, now standing at 80 meters. Both records are recognized by CMAS, the international diving federation.