Peter Colat from Zurich has been diving without breathing apparatus for 28 years. Before he stops, he dives over 100 meters into an ice-cold lake.
The water of the Visalpsee is two degrees cold. Peter Colat gradually got used to the cold.
Fritz Liechti
Peter Colat sits in the middle of the frozen Visalpsee in Tyrol. He wears swimming trunks, swimming cap and swimming goggles. On this February morning, Colat wants to dive at least 105.1 meters under the ice of Visalpsee. Without breathing, under a 16 centimeter thick blanket of ice. That would be a world record.
Colat, 52 years old, from Uster in the canton of Zurich, is a free diver. He dives without a compressed air bottle and without taking a breath. Some call his sport freediving – diving when your breath stops.
Peter Colat, 52, is a free diver and runs a diving school in Uster.
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Colat is one of the best free divers in Switzerland. With just one breath, he can stay underwater for up to eight minutes; in the indoor pool he swims breathlessly for 139 meters and he dives up to 66 meters deep. In 2011, he inhaled oxygen and lasted 21 minutes and 33 seconds underwater. At the time, it was a world record for static diving.
It is his last world record attempt
Colat has been diving without breathing apparatus for 28 years. In 1996, in Greece, he discovered that he could stay underwater in the hotel pool longer than his friends: he managed one and a half minutes straight away. After two weeks of vacation it was already 3 minutes and 20 seconds.
He found out for which sports holding your breath for a long time is an advantage. He first read about freediving in the Guinness Book of Records. He was fascinated by the sport and in 1998 he took part in the Apnea World Championships in Sardinia. Many more competitions followed.
Colat co-founded the Swiss freediving scene. He now wants to set his last record in Visalpsee in Austria; In the spring he will end his career in competitive diving.
Colat says freediving requires “endless discipline.” He trains more often and more intensively than before in order to be able to keep up with the best. And the competition is getting bigger: 3,000 athletes were registered with the Aida International freediving association in 2023, three times as many as ten years ago.
He spent six months preparing for the minutes under the ice of Lake Visalpsee. His upper arms are defined. He trained in the indoor pool for up to three hours every day. He dived, held his breath, practiced his swimming strokes.
The hard training gives Colat security. He says: “Anyone who steps into the ice water unprepared is acting carelessly.” In rare cases, cold shock leads to cardiac arrest. Colat gradually got used to the cold water. He works as a self-employed project manager in the construction industry. During his lunch break he went into the ice bath on his balcony. Once he stayed in the 6 degree cold bath for 22 minutes.
The heart beat 12 times per minute
Back on Visalpsee: Colat takes one last deep breath, then pushes his jaw forward, gasping for even more air. He calls this breathing technique “carp.” And his lip movements actually have something fishy about them. The technology allows him to fill his lungs with five additional liters of air. After the carp it comes to 13 liters.
Most can breathe up to five liters of air. Colat has an increased lung volume and a resting heart rate of 41 beats per minute. Normally the pulse is 60 to 80 beats per minute. During one of his dives, Colat’s heart was still beating 12 times per minute. It has to do less work to supply the body with oxygen. The body has adapted to freediving.
Then Colat slides into the water of the Visalpsee. It’s two degrees cold. Colat bends his arms and legs, then stretches, using the power of each stroke. The cold makes you swim faster, he says later. But you have to stay relaxed. “During freediving, my thoughts are calm, my head is clear.”
Colat speaks firmly and carefully, uses his gestures in a targeted manner, and hardly any question seems to unsettle him. He takes the relaxation of freediving with him into his everyday life. He says he’d rather take a deep breath than get upset.
Colat finds his personal freedom in freediving. He is with himself, enjoying the peace and quiet beneath the surface of the water. “We freedivers all have a beautiful place that we think about,” he says. The thoughts should relax, then the pulse stays low. Colat says he imagines he is on the beach, swimming in the sea.
But the peace and quiet of freediving is deceptive. Diving without oxygen can be life-threatening. Athletes are repeatedly injured and some have fatal accidents in the water.
So-called blackouts can occur during freediving – the athletes lose consciousness. During the dive, the body continues to use oxygen. If an athlete dives too long or too deep, the brain becomes deprived of oxygen. In the worst case, the blackouts during freediving lead to brain damage or drowning.
Colat experienced tragedy during a record attempt in freediving under ice. 13 years ago he lost a diving colleague in Lake Davos who was traveling with him under the ice. Colat doesn’t want to talk about the incident.
He says his hobby is an extreme sport and emphasizes the importance of safety precautions, especially under ice. His team drilled several holes in the ice of Lake Visalpsee. A rope is stretched in the water. When he feels a knot, he knows that there is a hole in the ice a few meters above him and that he could surface. Two divers swim behind him and, if necessary, they will bring him to the surface.
Peter Colat dives along a rope. If he sees a marking, he knows that he could emerge through a hole in the ice.
Peter Liechti
Expand boundaries, not exceed them
Another safety risk in freediving is doping. Drug abuse has increased in recent years. Some athletes tried to improve their performance with sedatives, laxatives or the vasodilator Viagra.
Athletes who use doping substances put themselves at even greater risk. “Doping is always bad, but it’s life-threatening when freediving,” says Colat. You can no longer feel your body. He pushes himself to his limits, but never beyond them. He would rather end a dive too early than too late.
Like a year ago, for example. Even then, he tried to break the world record for distance diving under ice. He failed. The Visalpsee was cloudy and visibility was poor. After 75 meters he decided to abandon the attempt. Safety was more important to him than a record.
This year the visibility in Visalpsee is good. Colat stays underwater for two and a half minutes, then dives back to the surface through an ice hole. He swam 106.3 meters through the cold – that’s the equivalent of four indoor swimming pool lengths. He beat the world record by 1.3 meters.
The next day, Colat sets another world record: he swims 114.2 meters in Visalpsee with fins.
A few weeks later, Colat said, a weight had been lifted from his heart. “I was so happy.” It was a perfect end to a long career. If the records had failed, he would have given up. He is over 50 years old and has been diving for decades. At some point enough will be enough.
Peter Colat knows when it’s time to show up.
Done: Peter Colat set a world record for distance diving under ice in Visalpsee.
Michael Gmur