"Let's do it again": 96-year-old war veteran breaks own scuba diving record
Woolley, who turned 96 on August 28, plunged to a depth of 42.4 meters for 48 minutes.
LARNACA (Reuters) - A 96-year-old World War Two veteran celebrated his birthday on Saturday (August 31) by breaking his own record as the world’s oldest active scuba diver for the third year running, plunging to the depths of the equivalent of a 15-storey building to explore a shipwreck off Cyprus.
Woolley, who turned 96 on August 28, plunged to a depth of 42.4 meters for 48 minutes, beating his previous record of 40.6 meters for 44 minutes.
"If I can still dive and my buddies are willing to dive with me I hope I can do it again next year," Woolley told Reuters after the event organized by the Larnaca municipality and the town’s tourism board.
Woolley, who lives in Cyprus, was a radio operator in World War Two. Has successively broken two previous records he held in 2017 and 2018. He is originally from Port Sunlight in northwest England.
The Zenobia, a cargo vessel laden with trucks that sank off of Larnaca in 1980, is a popular dive site. Underwater images showed Woolley and other divers sitting on the hull of the submerged ship as fish, and the occasional turtle, swam by.
A documentary on his life, "Life Begins at 90", will be shown at the Bosnia-Herzegovina film festival in September.
