Being from Genoa, the sea has always been the natural environment where I spent countless adventures during the long, hot summer months. In fact, I believe I’ve tried every activity that can be done in the sea: starting with swimming, moving on to windsurfing and sailing, and then finally discovering the wonders of the underwater world through my first experiences with snorkeling, spearfishing, and recreational diving. In short, I love the sea in all its aspects, and I want to enjoy it fully, both above and below the surface!

Professionally, I consider my "birth" to be the first Ara instructor course I attended in 1999, which introduced me to the beauty of teaching. During my first working season in Sardinia, at a renowned diving center, I realized how much I enjoyed teaching students, passing on my passion for the sea, and, in general, helping people learn new things.

After spending several years with a regulator in my mouth breathing compressed air, earning technical certifications for gas use, wreck diving, cave diving, and working in the Mediterranean and abroad, I moved to Sharm el Sheikh (Egypt), where I still partially reside today.

However, my personal discovery of freediving coincided with a very particular period in my life. After years of teaching recreational and technical diving, I began to lose some professional motivation. To find new ones, I decided to enroll in a basic freediving course with a dear friend and future partner, Andrea Zuccari.

What can I say about that period? Well... it was wonderful! For the first time in my life, I was challenging myself with a very complex sport, full of physical and psychological details, and it was giving me a hard time. You should know that I’ve never been naturally gifted or particularly predisposed to this sport; I loved practicing it, but I struggled a lot to learn it.

After about a year of dedicated practice (living in Sharm el Sheikh allowed me to go to the sea every day), I understood the value of this wonderful sport. Since there were no dedicated freediving centers at the time, I decided to professionally promote this passion by becoming an Apnea Academy instructor and finally opening the Only One Apnea Center, the first freediving center in Sharm el Sheikh, in 2007.

The following years were a whirlwind of challenges and adventures for me. With my partners at the time, we organized the Aida World Championships twice, both individual and team, met the strongest athletes of that era, organized countless national and world record attempts in every possible discipline, and thanks to my interactions with the competitive world, I personally started developing my training system. Over the years, this allowed me to train a good number of deep divers and future champions, many of whom are still active today.

Professionally, I have always sought to improve myself. In the following years, I continued my education by becoming an international judge and Aida instructor, SSI Freediving instructor, and PADI Freediving instructor. However, one of my greatest satisfactions came when, after meeting Giuseppe Minopoli, the owner of PSS educational system, and having intense professional exchanges with him, I was given the great opportunity to become the educational director of PSS Freediving. I wrote the content for the student manuals, thereby incorporating my technical and educational knowledge into an officially standardized curriculum.

In 2020, during the first year of the pandemic, realizing that international travel would experience a significant decline for a long time, my partner, colleague, and athlete Federica Anzellotti and I decided to start a new adventure by opening a branch in the Tremiti Islands during the summer. The project seems to be working well, so if you don’t feel like taking a plane to Egypt to dive with us, you can hop on a ferry and join us in the Tremiti Islands for a holiday that will "take your breath away"!

Jokes aside, I really hope that this new column of mine on Apnea Dreams will intrigue you, inspire you to improve, and help you "remotely" take the right steps toward unforgettable experiences. I will do my best to share my experience in the vast world of freediving through in-depth analyses and practical advice derived from many years of fieldwork.

For now, all I have left to do is wish you a good read... enjoy the blue and dive safe!