4.6 • 5.8K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
An anti-doping officer tells Lydia that drugs are only considered a problem in freediving on social media, and in podcasts. She learns the problem is bigger, and more complex, and more corrupt, than she realised.
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Reporter - Lydia Gard
Producer - Gary Marshall.
Music supervision and sound design - Karla Patella
Sound design - Rowan Bishop
Podcast artwork - Lola Williams
Fact checking - Poppy Bullard, Katie Gunning, Amalie Sortland, Madeleine Parr & Jess Swinburne
Executive producer - Basia Cummings
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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| 0:00.0 | The Observer. |
| 0:08.5 | I remember I was just sitting on my sofa, just watching morning TV. |
| 0:12.8 | I was watching a little bit before I start work and go on my Instagram. |
| 0:16.9 | And I saw the clip. |
| 0:19.8 | And to be honest with you, |
| 0:21.6 | it kind of turned my stomach a little bit. |
| 0:24.6 | On the 19th of September, Sam Zeneffu is sitting at home getting ready for work. |
| 0:29.6 | She's a Greek pool and depth diver living in the UK. |
| 0:34.6 | I'm months into my investigation. |
| 0:38.3 | The Seamass World Championships have just drawn to a close in Greece. |
| 0:42.3 | And in the aftermath of the competition, many free divers continue to post beautiful underwater |
| 0:47.3 | shots, reels of their competition dives. |
| 0:50.3 | They're smiling and crying at the surface as they receive a white card from the judges to indicate a successful dive. |
| 0:57.0 | And as Sam scrolling through these reels, an image pops up that stops her dead. |
| 1:02.0 | I saw Petter coming up from a deep dive. |
| 1:07.0 | There's a lot of frothing, bloody frothing coming out of his mouth. |
| 1:12.1 | He is like in a very bad state after the deep dive. |
| 1:16.7 | He obviously hurt himself diving. |
| 1:21.1 | It's an extremely hard thing to watch. |
| 1:24.4 | The video is a compilation of clips of Petta Clover posted in collaboration with |
| 1:29.3 | Vitamir Marichich on Instagram and Facebook. Petar surfaces after having what looks like a deep blackout, |
| 1:37.0 | his eyes rolling back in his head. He's being held by Vitamir who's trying to administer oxygen, |
... |
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