Meet Archana Sankaranarayanan, India's deepest female freediver

The Hindu

2 days ago

In the latest Mission: Impossible film, Tom Cruise's character Ethan Hunt dives nearly 500 feet into the ocean to retrieve something key to his mission — surviving a torn diving suit, freezing temperatures, and a dangerously long breath-hold. While it makes for thrilling cinema, reality is starkly different. For most people, descending even 60 feet underwater without breathing equipment is a risky proposition.
But for Archana Sankaranarayanan, it is a competitive pursuit and one in which she now holds multiple national records. Based in Chennai, Archana is the deepest female freediver in India, holding national records across all four depth disciplines of the sport: Constant Weight, Constant Weight Bi-Fins, Constant Weight No Fins, and Free Immersion. She began her record-breaking streak at the AIDA Mabini Depth Quest, held from May 1 to 6 this year in Mabini, the Philippines, where she set four national records, including surpassing one of her own. Just two weeks later, at the Hug Cup in Panglao, also in the Philippines, she broke two more records, both of which were also her own.
Freediving is the sport of diving into the depths of the ocean, with minimal or no gear and no oxygen support, and Archana has dived as deep as 35m (115 feet approx).
Just a few years ago, Archana was living a very different life — as a corporate lawyer. 'It was my dream job. I saw all the glamour and felt like I was in the TV show Suits,' she says. But a scuba diving course in the Andamans changed everything. Soon after, she quit her job, moved to the islands, and began working as a scuba diving professional. 'There's pressure in law, but underwater, there's even more pressure. Literal water pressure. But I loved every bit of it,' she says.
It was during her time teaching scuba that she stumbled upon a video of freediver Shubham Pandey. 'I couldn't understand how he was staying underwater so long. I was just… fascinated.' Within months, she had messaged him, signed up for a course in Bali, and booked a one-way ticket.
'I had no goal of being the deepest woman freediver or anything,' she says. 'I just wanted to break one record in the Free Immersion category because I was very comfortable with that.' With this, she has become a rare athlete, and one of the few Indian women, to make a mark in a sport that is still finding its footing in the country.
According to the 32-year-old, freediving is more a mental sport than a physical one. 'Scuba diving was amazing, but in freediving it's more like looking within yourself. You're holding your breath and going as deep as possible. Freediving made me look within. It forced me to work on my mental and physical self,' she says.
Archana's progress came with discipline, discomfort, and a steep learning curve. After her initial course in Bali, she continued training in Murudeshwar, Karnataka, where she dived at Netrani Island. Then she trained with freediving school Apnea in Bali, with an all-women's team and later with renowned freediving coach Sergei Busargin in Thailand, who helped her master one of the sport's most challenging categories: Constant Weight No Fins (CNF). 'I'm not a born athlete,' she says. 'I struggled with food, protein intake, and losing bone density. But I trained every day in the ocean, pool, and dry sessions, and slowly started believing I could do it. I am privileged to be able to get access to this kind of coaching. I'm sure there are better freedivers. I've seen fisher women in Tamil Nadu who go deeper in a sari to pluck seaweed,' she says.
Even as she racks up national records, Archana is already thinking about who might break them next. 'I don't want to be the only one doing this,' she says. 'I hope someone else comes and beats all my records so I can come back and beat them again.' What excites her most is the slow but steady rise of Indian women entering the sport. For Archana, the deeper goal is not just about depth, but access and encouraging more women to cross boundaries, both in water and beyond it.