Petar Klovar of Croatia won the Constant Weight No Fins gold at the 2026 AIDA Depth World Championships in Limassol. He reached 96 metres on the second day of competition, finishing three metres ahead of Russia’s Alexey Molchanov.
96 metres, no fins
Molchanov, competing independently, answered with a 93-metre dive that lasted four minutes and thirty seconds. The gap was narrow at the top but decisive.
The bronze medal was shared. Oman’s Omar Al Ghailani and Brad Stephens of the United States each completed a successful dive to 75 metres. Behind them, the CNF field was thin and unforgiving—organisers issued 15 red cards and 8 yellow cards across the men’s event.
A rivalry renewed in cooler water
The Mediterranean venue brought a sharp thermocline: surface water sat at 25–28°C but fell to 17–19°C at depth. “I knew it was going to be a hard dive, so I got a little bit cold-ish, on purpose,” he told reporters afterwards, “but on the way down, I’m more into automatic mode.”
Klovar holds the absolute CNF world record of 103 metres, set in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2025. Against Molchanov, the rivalry stretches back at least to the 2021 CMAS World Championships, where Klovar’s 92-metre performance edged out the Russian’s 90 metres. This latest chapter simply extended the same story.
His victory in Limassol adds a world championship gold to a collection that already includes AIDA world records in the FIM discipline. Klovar remains the man to catch in the discipline he has come to define.
