Thibault Guignés
Thibault Guignes is 37 years old French freediving athlete specialized in depth disciplines. He holds 8 National Records for France in the Free Immersion discipline, with a personal best in competition of 117m. That makes it the 5th performance ever achieved in this discipline worldwide. His unique approach of training depth all year round and repeating dives over and over again led him to achieve more than 200 dives past 100m depth in his freediving career so far.
Thibault grew up in the countryside in France, not far from the sea and decided to study Ocean engineering. After brilliant studies in this field, he was destined for a PhD in Oceanography but during a research trip in French Polynesia, Thibault realized that he needed a life in the open and in beautiful islands and came up with this project to open a scuba diving shop somewhere in the tropical seas. After working 5 years in an office to fund his project, Thibault went on a trip around the world to find a suitable place for his scuba shop and on the way discovered freediving, beginning of 2014. That was the real turning point in his life.
From this moment Thibault decided to dedicate all his time and resources to Freediving. He started to train intensively and became quickly one of the rising stars of Freediving being selected in the French Team for the 2015 World Championships after only one year of practice. Thibault also developed his own Freediving school in the Philippines to share his passion and knowledge about freediving while training and competing. Thibault is now one of the deepest Freediver in the world, not only in Free Immersion discipline but also in Constant weight Bi-fins discipline with an astounding personal best of 110m in training.
Achievements:
117 m Free Immersion National Record, Curacao, October 2019
2nd best performance worldwide in Free Immersion in 2019
5th best performance worldwide in CWT Bi-fins in 2019
Winner of OceanQuest Curacao challenge 2019, Curacao
2nd of the Blue Element competition 2019, Dominica
Winner of the Japanese Cup 2019, Panglao
Winner of the Singapore Depth Championships 2018, Bali
Bronze medal in FIM in Vertical Blue 2018, Bahamas