Branko Petrovic got over his heartbreak from last year and won the Fazza Championship for Freediving for the third time. At the Hamdan Sports Complex, the Serbian looked a class apart in the competition pool during qualifying and that proved to be the case once more in the final.

Petrovic had a fantastic time of 10:14.66s, which saw him finish well clear of Croatian runner-up Goran Colak (9:16.18s) and third-placed Pole Mateusz Jan Malina (8:29.19s).

Colak’s compatriot Veljano Zanki (8:17.37s) came fourth, while Oleksandr Bubenchykov (7:59.19s), of Ukraine, rounded off the top five.

Petrovic, whose time is a new final-day record at this event, said: “I’m very happy to have won the Fazza Championship for Freediving for a third time.

“I was disqualified from the finals in 2015 as I left the rope for a moment and I didn’t want to take that chance again this year. I didn’t want to risk it, so I’d have even been satisfied with a much closer result. I honestly didn’t know my time.”

Elsewhere, Omani freedivers locked out the podium positions in the GCC category as Omar Bin Abdullah Al Ghilani (5:22.58s), Abdul Rahim Bin Abdullah Al Ghilani (5:19.01s) and Khamees Bin Abdullah Al Arimi (5:17.90s) claimed gold, silver and bronze respectively.

UAE’s Saif Mohammed Al Tunaiji (5:12.74s) was the only other participant in the regional classification to break the five-minute barrier.

The home nation fared considerably better in the juniors’ contest, where Saif Abdul Rahman Al Zarouni (2:54.99s), Khalid Hashem Al Marzouqi (2:28.23s) and Humaid Mohammed Al Marzouqi (2:01.73s) took the three podium places