I have a two-minute breathing ritual, which I repeat before all of my dives and competitions. I relax and empty my mind. If my mind isn’t in this peaceful place, freediving becomes incredibly difficult. I find this process is one of the most interesting aspects of free diving.

I tried freediving from the first time in 2000, when the first club in Finland opened. As I settled myself beneath the surface of the water, watching distorted shapes move slowly around me, I knew I would inevitably become obsessed with freediving. The serenity was addictive. That same year I entered the World Championships in France. Just four years later, I managed to set a world record in distance diving with fins – 158m. Now my personal best in competitions is 192m and I can hold my breath more than 6 minutes 30 seconds.

I wasn’t drawn to the ice straight away. In 2010, during a downhill bike ride I fell and shattered my leg. It was so badly broken in so many places I thought I might lose it altogether. I had a complicated procedure called a Fasciotomy, after which they had to keep the larges cuts – which ran all the way from ankle to the knee on both sides of my leg – exposed for ten days to avoid necrosis.

I recovered to an extent, but I was consistently in pain I had to walk with sticks for almost a year. For three, I would wake up throughout the night, writhing from the pain. Eventually, my doctor suggested cold water therapy, which I thought could be interesting. At this point, I was ready to try almost anything. I remember it so clearly – the icy water swallowing up my leg hungrily and how much I hated the sensation. At first the cold was excruciating, like a thousand needles penetrating a deep ache – but I got used to it. It soon became my only tangible sanctuary from the pain and it became quite meditative in itself.