“I'm thrilled to have achieved this record, but it will take a while to sink in,” Mark Threadgold said. "I was a bit nervous beforehand but things couldn't have gone more smoothly."

British diver Mark Threadgold has set a new world record for the deepest dive attempted by a blind person after reaching 103 metres in the Egyptian Red Sea.

The 38-year-old former soldier from Brighton beat his previous record by more than 30 metres at the Blue Hole dive site of Dahab (Egypt) on June 16, 2006.

Threadgold lost his sight in 1999 after suffering head injuries in an accident. He learned to dive five years before he lost his sight. But was determined to carry on after the accident.

He said he hoped the record would raise the profile of St Dunstan's, a charity in U.K which helps rehabilitate blind ex-servicemen and women. This is not the first time the father-of-two has broken blind world records. He set the 99.19 miles per hour blind powerboat speed record and the speed record for circumnavigating the Isle of Wight.

Threadgold took two hours to complete his latest record-breaking dive using a trimix closed-circuit re-breather. Four sighted divers controlled his equipment at every stage.