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The death of a French free diver in an accident off the Riviera last week has thrown the spotlight on a dangerous race to conquer ever greater ocean depths on a single breath of air.

Descending a steel line into the depths of the Mediterranean, Loïc Leferme, 36, for years a leader of the extreme sport of "no limits" free diving, died while training to win back his crown from an Austrian diver who had shattered his record.

Members of his team said Leferme, a lanky blond-haired figure known for his mystical manner, had got stuck as he was being hauled up the line by an inflated bag from a depth of at least 561ft, his previous record.

"The cord was blocked because of something underwater — I don't know what," said Cédric Palermo, who was monitoring the dive from a rubber dinghy at the site near Nice.

Leferme, married with two children, was a hero of the free diving circuit, a so-called "fish man" who appeared in numerous documentaries about a sport made famous by The Big Blue, a 1988 French film starring Jean Reno. It was about the friendship and rivalry between Jacques Mayol, a French diver, and Enzo Maiorca, an Italian, in the 1960s.

Luc Besson, the director, depicted free diving as a dreamy, romantic adventure, but the real-life story ended in tragedy with the suicide of the dolphin-loving Mayol.

The cult film attracted enormous interest in free diving which, unlike other extreme sports, is an ancient activity related to diving for pearls.

There are an estimated 20,000 enthusiasts around the world practising many different methods, but the most popular form of competition is the "constant ballast" technique in which divers use flippers to propel themselves into the depths before coming up for air.

A select fraternity of no limits divers such as Leferme, from near Dunkirk in northern France, had taken the sport to ever greater extremes, riding a weighted sled down a vinyl-coated steel line into black depths at which tin cans implode, the blood vessels shrink and the lungs constrict to the size of oranges.

Leferme, one of an estimated two dozen people in the world believed to have been capable of descending so deep, described the experience in poetic terms as his "symbiosis with the elements". But brutal risks accompany each attempt on a record and the Frenchman once admitted: "It's a hostile world down there."

Leferme won his first title in 1999 with a descent to 450ft off St Jean-Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera. This was some 100ft below the level at which Russia's Kursk nuclear submarine was stranded in the Barents Sea in 2000. At this depth the diver's heart rate can drop to 20 beats a minute and the body is crushed with 20lb of pressure per square centimetre.

Soon Leferme had dived to 531ft, a level at which he said the sea was "my little secret garden". This was just two weeks after the death of Audrey Mestre, a close friend and compatriot, in an attempt to break a world record off the Dominican coast in 2002. He dedicated his record to her.

At the time Leferme said it would be ridiculous, because of one tragedy, to ban the no limits diving: "It would be like trying to forbid people from climbing Everest. It's impossible." The comparison seemed fitting: the competition in the deep has been likened by one observer to a race to become the Edmund Hillary of the aquatic world.

In 2002 Leferme, using special meditative breathing techniques, defied medical science by reaching a depth of 561ft — this had been Mestre's goal — but that record did not last for long. Herbert Nitsch, an Austrian diver, managed to beat him by more than 3ft.

Then last year Nitsch notched up another world record of 600ft. The next championship was to be held in July and that is what Leferme had been training for.

He had once said that the danger of free diving was not so much the depths involved as human error. Free divers train with scientific precision to adapt to the psychological and physical demands of the challenge.

After being pulled down into depths that are shunned even by many species of fish, the diver inflates an air bag at the top of the sled that pulls him to the surface. Because of the short submersion time, decompression sickness — or the "bends" — is not usually a problem.

In the case of Mestre, 28, who picked up the passion for free diving from her husband, it is believed that her air bag did not inflate properly, slowing her ascent. At about 427ft she passed out and fell off the sled. Usually safety divers are on hand to help out, but by the time they got her to the surface she was beyond rescue.

As for Leferme, his ascent was halted for as yet unknown reasons just 60ft from the surface when his lungs would have been screaming for air.

It is by no means certain that the so-called "bale-out technique" would have saved him. Under this system, if a diver has not begun the ascent after an agreed time, he is automatically hauled to the surface by a pulley operated by one of the safety divers, whether or not the target depth has been reached.

The accidents have raised concerns about dangers but Leferme would, no doubt, object to his death being used to restrict the activities of his comrades. They were preparing last week to follow him down even deeper.

SOURCE - The Sunday Times