Mateusz Malina - the first Pole in the history of freediving world champion!

Mateusz Malina’s road to the top was not easy, but talent, determination and the support he received allowed him to reach for the highest laurels in free diving, considered one of the most difficult sports in the world. He won the world title on 25 June, at the Individual AIDA Pool World Championships 2015, in Belgrade. He won in the DNF (dynamic without fins) competition with a score of 214m. This is already the second such important trophy won within the last year – on 9 November 2014, during the competition in Brno, he set a new world record by swimming 226 m without fins.

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Mateusz Malina’s story shows that talent and determination alone are not enough to reach the championship level. Support is necessary. Although he already won the world vice-championship title in 2011, his further career was put in doubt – participation in the competitions in 2013, where he would have had a chance to fight for the highest trophy, was not possible due to lack of funds. In the most difficult moment a helping hand was given to the athlete by the medical company GRENA, which under the project “Grena Talents Forge” enabled him to develop his international career. Thanks to this Malina could focus exclusively on improving and enhancing his skills. For the last two years, the Pole has been consistently training Dynamic Apnea Without Fins (DNF), achieving two main goals that he set for himself.

“Each of my days was subordinated to training. I knew that only systematic work is the key to success. I am very grateful to my girlfriend, friends and the Grena LTD. company for believing in me and supporting me a lot. Thanks to them I had the strength to overcome more difficult moments. Now it is time for a well-deserved rest and to celebrate the success”. – says Mateusz Malina and adds: “I remember when I started training. Diving is an expensive sport, and I really wanted to try my hand at it. I raised my first funds while working abroad on an assembly line in a car factory. At first, I trained in Krakow’s Zakrzówek, a flooded quarry where a lot of people from all over Poland dive. After the first success I believed in my strengths and kept raising the bar. Today I can say that I took the right path and achieved success.”

When Mateusz Malina took his first steps in freediving, not many people had heard of this discipline, let alone heard of professional trainers or training camps aimed at improving athletes’ fitness. His story is simply incredible – Malina comes from Ustroń, a small town where there wasn’t even a swimming pool at the time (!), and he learned the basics of freediving from the internet by watching instructional videos. Today, he is 29 years old, holds the world championship title, holds the world record in swimming without fins while inhaling once, and holds 27 Polish records.

The “Grena Talents Forge” programme is run by an international medical company GRENA Ltd, founded and run by Poles. For 25 years it has been providing medical institutions around the world with tools and equipment for innovative surgeries in thoracic surgery. For several years it has been implementing a programme to support young talented people in local markets. In Poland, apart from Mateusz Malina, GRENA has also supported Sebastian Druszkiewicz, a speed skater and member of the Polish national team at the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi 2014.

Source: Press release