Simona Auteri
Simona was born in Genova, a harbor town in Italy. Having learned to swim at a very early age, she spent most of her free time sailing and touring around Italy and Europe for competitions in class 420. When she was 17 she left her sea town to study in California and then moved to Switzerland to pursue studies in Architecture, which brought her to live in Paris, London, Tokyo, and Shanghai. In London, she founded her own design consultancy practice, Matter of Stuff.
Whilst on a solo trip in 2018, she arrived at Kurma, a freediving center in Camiguin, a remote island in the Philippines. With fear of ear pain, she didn’t want to take a freediving course, however, as she was shown how to equalize, she discovered she was naturally hands-free. That was a life-changing moment as she realized how much she had missed the sea. Back in London, she joined her freediving club Apnea Revolution, and trained sparingly in UK's cold lakes and pool whilst leading a busy design practice, occasionally taking freediving holidays to progress through her AIDA education. In 2019 she took a month off work to volunteer for Madagascar Whale Shark Project, and came back to London with a photography prize with Explorers Against Extinction for her underwater shots with whale sharks.
As covid-19 stuck she saw the chance of working remotely and in July 2020 she moved to Nice for a month to train at Cipa and Chango, where she increased her depth from 34m to 51m. In September 2020 she met Marco Nones from Only One Apnea in Tremiti, Italy, and in a couple of sessions learned most secrets of advanced equalization. She moved to Dahab in January 2021 to train and was coached by Gus Kreivenas. In April she decided to join her first competition and came in second female overall, and a month later at her first Freediving World Cup in Sharm El Sheik she achieved two Italian National Records for CTWB. Progressing fast towards depth across different disciplines, she reached the depth of -73m in five months of training.
As a digital nomad, she continues to train on a regular basis, looking to continue her progression in depth through competitive freediving and keeping her connection with the water.
See Simona's AIDA rankings.