Wonder Woman of the Week: Sofia Gomez Uribe
- Dec 8, 2021
- 1 min read
Typically on this blog we spotlight women who are simply metaphorically super-human, but this demigoddess of the sea might possibly be truly something more than mortal. Freediver Sofia Gomez Uribe was born in Colombia in 1992 and spent much of her childhood as a competitive synchronized swimmer- a sport that really tests athletes' ability to hold their breath underwater- before taking up finswimming- swimming using fins. In 2013, Uribe started freediving- when swimmers dive without scuba gear underwater to compete over who can swim the furthest and longest without needing to come up for air. The sport is extremely dangerous, and countless freedivers throughout its history have died in pursuit of setting world records.
So far, Uribe is not one of them. Instead, she's set multiple world records for her freediving distances in the finswimming category. In fact, Uribe has broken so many records, that she participated in a medical experiment testing just how much the human body can endure under extreme conditions. Sofia Gomez Uribe isn't just a physical superhuman either. Uribe has used her athleticism as a platform for fundraising for victims of hurricanes following Hurricane Maria's devastation in Dominica in 2017. Uribe has certainly earned a spot as a real-life Wonder Woman- not only for her superhuman endurance in zero oxygen environments, but for her work in using that extreme underwater athleticism as a tool for saving others from the destruction the ocean can deliver.
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