It’s a collab between watchmaker and French free-diving champion Guillaume Néry, making it a watch for serious divers, with looks and functionality to match.
Ahead of SIHH next week, Panerai is bringing the focus back to its diving watches by presenting a new version of its Submersible Chrono, the Submersible Chrono Guillaume Néry Edition.
What stands the new edition out is the collab between watchmaker and French free-diving champion Guillaume Néry, making it a watch for serious divers, with looks and functionality to match.
To fully understand the significance of the collaboration, one needs to first know the tale of Guillaume Néry.
A freediving world champion
On a single breath of air, Néry explores the deepest pools in the world, even setting the world record of 129 metres. He specialises in constant weight, which is the queen of all freediving disciplines using only fin propulsion to descent and ascent. He broke the freediving world record four times and is the holder of the world champion title twice.
He retired prematurely in 2015 after his fifth attempt to break the world record of 129m. A mistake on the organisers’ end saw him accidentally making the deepest freedive in history to -139m, but not without near fatal injury.
He left the competitive diving arena but still trains daily and shares his passion with others through workshops, clinics, lectures and more.
A watch made for the depths of his passion
With a champion freediver like that backing up the new timepiece, it’s needless to say that it is targeted at serious divers. It is proudly sporty and bold, with a unidirectional rotating bezel of titanium with an applied blue ceramic disc. The bezel isn’t the only thing made of titanium – the entire 47mm case, including the caseback, is too, because it needs to be ultra-strong and corrosion resistant to take on such watery depths.
Panerai’s trademark crown guard nestles comfortably on the right side of the case, capped so that the crown can’t by accidentally accessed during a dive. Two screw-in pushers balance things out on the left side at 8 and 10 o’clock respectively.
Dial legibility is well thought out in this one, optimised for all lighting conditions, even in complete darkness. Luminous white dots and indexes contrast nicely against a shark grey textured face. The hands come in the signature Panerai blue for a muted and functional colour scheme.
Néry’s signature decorates the back of the case, along with the depth of his final record dive achieved with a single breath, 126m. Inside it beats alive with Panerai’s P.9100 calibre automatic movement that is executed entirely in-house, sustained by a power reserve of 72 hours.
Learn more about both watch and diver at the official website here.
