Fair Play | Deep Water Ep2
The Walkers: The real Salt Path | Tortoise Investigates
The Observer
4.6 • 5.8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lydia travels to Kalamata, Greece, a renowned freediving spot to investigate the doping allegations. What substances are athletes meant to be taking? And what are the risks – to them, and to the sport she loves?
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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
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Observer. |
| 0:09.8 | Where's home to you? |
| 0:15.9 | Home. Home is a sea now, yeah. |
| 0:19.6 | David Meller started competition free diving seven years ago. |
| 0:24.0 | When he became my coach, he recently adopted a nomadic lifestyle, |
| 0:27.9 | teaching and training at dive spots around the world. |
| 0:31.2 | Wherever you go, you usually make new friends. |
| 0:33.6 | So in the end, pretty much you could dive anywhere in the world |
| 0:36.6 | and you know you're going to meet somebody. |
| 0:38.8 | Back in August, he was in Mitakas, Greece, training for a competition. |
| 0:43.6 | And that's where we arranged to meet. |
| 0:45.9 | In a quintessential Greek tavernor, only a few steps from the water's edge. |
| 0:54.1 | What makes it addictive? |
| 0:56.7 | What keeps you coming back for more? |
| 0:58.8 | Yeah, I mean, addicted. |
| 1:00.3 | We all say don't chase the numbers, right? |
| 1:04.8 | We all chase numbers, but it's the way you chase the number. |
| 1:07.8 | What will be enough for you, do you think? |
| 1:09.8 | I don't know. |
| 1:10.3 | I always thought 50 meters was enough. |
| 1:12.6 | I remember saying that to myself, that 50 meters is deep enough. |
| 1:16.6 | And the minute I did 50 meters, it had to be 55. |
... |
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