Audrey Mestre

Audrey Mestre was a French world record-setting freediver, born in Saint-Denis on 11 August 1974 and died on 12 October 2002. Her family loved snorkelling and scuba diving and moved to Mexico City while she was in her teens, and she later studied marine biology at a university in La Paz. In 1996 she met the freediver Francisco Ferreras, whom she married in 1999 and who coached her. In 2000 she broke the women's world record off Fort Lauderdale by diving to 125 metres on one breath, and a year later she improved it to 130 metres. She died in October 2002 during a no-limits record attempt in the Dominican Republic, an event heavily criticised for its poor safety arrangements. She was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame, and her story was told in a book and an ESPN film.