Freediver Vitomir Maričić Joins Sports Hall of Fame

Croatian freediver Vitomir Maričić has been named to the International Sports Hall of Fame (ISHOF) Class of 2026, putting a breath-hold athlete on a list usually filled by stars of mainstream sport. The selection was announced on July 9, and the induction ceremony was scheduled for Saturday, September 26, in the Grand Ballroom of the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, held alongside Joe Weider's Olympia Fitness & Performance Weekend.

He shares the class with chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, bodybuilder Dexter Jackson, former UFC champion Forrest Griffin, NFL great Eric Dickerson and the Harlem Globetrotters. Since it was founded in 2012, ISHOF has inducted 78 athletes and says it weighs leadership, character and service alongside results. Founder and president Dr. Robert Goldman said the new inductees join an elite group of champions whose accomplishments have motivated and inspired millions around the world.

The records behind the honour

The hall pointed to two marks. The first is a breath hold of 29 minutes and 3 seconds, performed while lying on the bottom of a three-metre pool in Croatia. Guinness World Records files it under the longest breath held voluntarily under water using oxygen: before the attempt Maričić breathed pure oxygen for ten minutes, loading his body with far more oxygen than ordinary air, which is only about 21 percent oxygen, can provide. The result beat the previous record, set in 2021 by fellow Croatian Budimir Šobat, by roughly five minutes. Without oxygen pre-breathing, his reported best is 10 minutes and 8 seconds.

The gap between those two numbers is largely physiology. Starting with blood rich in oxygen delays the body's low-oxygen alarm and blunts the chemoreceptor response to rising carbon dioxide, the signal that normally drives the urge to breathe. That is why the two kinds of hold are recorded separately.

The second is the longest underwater walk on a single breath, 107 metres (351 feet). Maričić uses the attention these feats bring to promote marine conservation, which the hall also cited in its announcement.

A note for recreational freedivers

Oxygen-assisted holds sit in their own Guinness category precisely because they are not comparable to normal static apnea, and they are not a training method. Breathing pure oxygen outside a controlled setting carries its own risks. Long breath holds of any kind should never be practised alone: always train with a buddy who is watching you from the surface and knows how to respond to a blackout, and learn static apnea through a course with a certified freediving instructor.