Vera Giampietro was born in Bellinzona, Switzerland, in 1990. She studied and lived in Lausanne for 10 years. She discovered freediving in 2018 and quickly became an instructor. She started competing on the same year, but because of an unfortunate event she was forced out of the water for two years. A medical mistake in an Egyptian hospital left her with a huge eardrum perforation and she had to stop everything to try and find a solution. Even in Europe, all the doctors she visited told her that she would have never dived again. The first two surgeries failed within a couple of weeks.

In 2020, she moved back to Egypt during the pandemic to reconnect with the sea and decided to start diving anyways during her stay in Sinai. After only two weeks, she broke all the Swiss depth records winning gold medals in her first competitions after the accident (with a perforated eardrum). Despite her great comeback, Vera still needed to fix her eardrum so she went back to Europe to keep looking for a solution to a problem that seemed impossible to fix.

She never gave up on her dream of freediving and in the following years, she had 3 more surgeries and still managed to keep breaking records in international competitions, qualify and participate in 2 World Championships. In 2023, her 5th attempt to fix the perforation finally worked and so she took a whole year to fully recover.

Vera could finally start diving again in March 2024 and has already broken one National record in the pool (110 DNF) and 3 in depth (41, 43 and 44 CNF)! She had to struggle for many years to fix her handicap, but she never lost hope and finally succeded.

Yoga teacher, freediving instructor, athlete, passionate climber, Vera is in love with movement and nature. She is based between Switzerland and Egypt, travelling all over the world to train and compete. She finances most of her expenses organising freediving related activities and workshops about stress management for companies. In thee winter she is working as a ski instructor in the Swiss Alps and giving conferences.

Vera is on a mission to bring more awareness and mindfulness to others. She loves to talk in public about her experience, hoping to inspire others to follow their dreams.