STORY

Vera Giampietro was born in Bellinzona, Switzerland, in 1990. She studied and lived in Lausanne for 10 years. She discovered freediving in 2018, became an instructor and started competing on the same year, but an unfortunate event forced out of the water for two years. A medical mistake in an Egyptian hospital caused her a huge eardrum perforation. Even in Europe, doctors told her that she would have never dived again. The first two surgeries failed within a couple of weeks.

In 2020, she moved back to Egypt during the pandemic to reconnect with the sea and decided to start diving anyways during her stay in Sinai. After only two weeks, she broke all the Swiss depth records winning gold medals in her first competition after years dry.

She never gave up on her dream of freediving and in the following years, she had 3 more surgeries and still managed to keep breaking records in international competitions, qualify and participate in 2 World Championships.

In 2023, her 5th attempt to fix the perforation finally worked and after one year of downtime, Vera could finally start diving again in March 2024.

The results of her first year competing after finally healing speak for themselves: in 2024, she broke her first indoor record (110 DNF) and 7 in depth (41, 43, 44, 48, 50, 52 CNF and 63 CTWB).

Yoga, freediving, rock climbing and ski instructor, athlete, sailor, Vera is in love with movement and nature. She is based between Switzerland and Egypt, travelling all over the world to train and compete. She finances most of her expenses organising freediving related activities, motivational speeches and workshops.

Vera is on a mission to bring more awareness and mindfulness to others. She loves to talk in public about her experience, hoping to inspire others to follow their dreams.