Enzo Maiorca obituary

Enzo Maiorca, who has died aged 85, was widely regarded as one of the greatest freedivers of all time, and set 17 world records over his career. A champion of the sea and its denizens, he lived in fear of being confused with the fictional character of Enzo depicted in Luc Besson’s 1988 film Le Grand Bleu (The Big Blue), which recounted the rivalry between two freedivers, one French, one Italian. While the film created a flattering, mythic version of Maiorca’s French friend and rival, Jacques Mayol, the onscreen portrayal of Enzo (by the French actor Jean Reno) was a thuggish invention. Though the character had been renamed “Enzo Molinari”, the connection was all too obvious and Maiorca took out an injunction to prevent screenings of the film in his native Italy.

The film’s popularity can in part be ascribed to Besson’s understanding of the obsessive world of competitive freediving, in which participants descend to superhuman depths on a single breath of air. Together with Mayol and the Brazilian freediver Américo Santarelli, Maiorca had captured the public’s attention in the 1960s by defying the warnings of scientists that the human body could not survive below 50 metres on a single breath of air.

While Mayol was closely involved with filming and willingly allowed his name to be used, Maiorca was suspicious and withdrew his support. Years later, in his autobiography Homo Delphinus (1990), Mayol wrote that the film was a fable, but the rivalry was real. “Our duel was always fought at a distance, never on the same day and the same place … It would take too long to expand upon the differences in personality between the two Enzos. The true one is much less surly, much more of a dreamer, idealistic and cerebral.”

Over the era in which he competed, Maiorca’s depth records in what is known as the “variable buoyancy” category were pushed from 45m in 1960 to an astonishing 101m in 1988. This is the most extreme of the freediving disciplines, in which the divers descend to a preordained target depth on a weighted sled, followed by a speedy return to the surface holding onto an air balloon. In doing so, Maiorca helped to rewrite scientific expectations of the human body’s ability to adapt to pressure and depth.

“When I first started thinking about setting freediving records, the medical experts kept saying that a man could not stay alive diving deeper than 165ft [50m] because his lungs would not make it,” Maiorca recalled years later. “Doctors were creating barriers for us and I admit that at the time it worried me. Even Aristotle claimed a man could dive no deeper than 30 ft.”

Part of the legacy of Maiorca and his generation is that physiologists started looking at what happens when humans dive deep. With the knowledge gleaned from years of research, coupled with the refining of training and technique, today’s freedivers are superhuman athletes. The current “no limits” world record, held by the Austrian Herbert Nitsch, stands at a staggering 262m.

Maiorca was born in Syracuse, Sicily, where he learned to swim at the age of four, despite having a fear of the sea that never entirely left him. In later life he would often say how important it is to respect the sea and “never take it lightly”. A formative passion for spearfishing led him to read about depth records set by spearfishers such as Ennio Falco and Alberto Novelli.

In September 1960, he successfully descended to a depth of 45m, in the process setting the first of 17 records in the variable buoyancy category. Two months later, he extended this to 49m, then in August 1961 set a new record of 50m in the “constant weight” category, in which there are no additional buoyancy aids and the diver must descend and ascend with their own fin power. The Italian media dubbed him Lord of the Abysses.

In 1967 he gave up spearfishing after an encounter with a grouper in the Bay of Syracuse. The great fish was stuck in a cavity between two walls and he reached out to touch it, feeling the pulsing of blood under its skin and sensing its fear. “Since then my speargun lies like a derelict, an archaeological item, in the dusty basement of my house.” He remained a vegetarian throughout his adult life.

Maiorca’s career stalled in 1974 during an attempt to descend to 90m in the Gulf of Salerno. The event was being televised live by the Italian national broadcaster. Six metres into his dive, Maiorca collided with a scuba diver who was trying to obtain underwater footage. On surfacing, Maiorca was furious and made his feelings known with a string of expletives that were broadcast live to the nation.

Banned from television, he retired from competition until 1988 when, spurred by the success of his freediving daughters Patrizia and Rosanna and the publicity surrounding The Big Blue, he returned to set his final record, with a descent to 101m.

In 1994 he was elected to the Italian senate for the Alleanza Nazionale party, and served a two-year term. He remained steadfast in refusing to allow screenings of The Big Blue in Italy until 2002, shortly after Mayol’s death.

“I liked the movie,” Maiorca said in an interview when he was 76. “But I wasn’t happy with the way the director chose to portray me … According to Besson I was an uneducated mafioso. Excuse me, but I am not that kind of a person.”