Shark Freediving

On Saturday May 26th the Individual Apnea National Championships of Venezuela took place in Caracas, Venezuela. This AIDA ranked competition was filled with about 40 athletes from different places in Venezuela and an Argentinian guest, Walter Svajelg. They competed this day in static and one of the two dynamic disciplines, as preferred by the athlete.

It was good to see a returning familiar face to this competition, especially after his accident of last year; Carlos Coste won the static discipline with an easy 6:18 minutes without wet suit! 2nd place winner was Lorenzo Hidalgo with 5:35 min and in the 3rd place the Argentinian rookie, Walter Svajelg with 5:21 min. With the women the first place was for Karla Mendez with a time of 4:40 min. 2nd place for Ambar Peralta with 4:15 and in the 3rd place Iru Balic with 3:59.

In the evening the Venezuelan freedivers showed their strength in the dynamic with fins discipline. The competition was won by Miguel Hernandez, equaling William Winram’s pan American record of 174 meters. 2nd place to Lorenzo Hidalgo, diving 158 mts and in the 3rd place Luis Arismendi, 130 meters. There were two DQ for not being able to complete the Surface Protocol, Carlos Coste at 152 meters and Antonio Del Luca at 160 meters. Nevertheless great performances! With the women, Ambar Peralta dived 126 meters to win the comp. 2nd place to Karla Mendez, 119 meters and Iru Balic in 3rd place, 117 meters.

In dynamic without fins first place was for Luis Arismendi with 96 meters. 2nd place was for Jesus Carrera with 76 meters and in 3rd place was Adrian Suarez with 75 meters. There were only two women in this discipline, first place to Dioana Arismendi with 77 meters and 2nd place to Monica Ruiz, 72 meters.

The three first in each category classify automatically to participate in the individual world championship that will take place in Maribor, Slovenia. Judges on site were Gabriela Contreras, Cesar Maza and Ramon Colmenares and the photo of Carlos was made by Gabriela Contreras.

This article is written by our new contributor Alejandro Andres. Alejandro is an AIDA instructor in the Patagonia region in Argentina and runs successfully his own freediving school “Apnea Patagonia”. Alejandro is the first of some new contributors to this site who offered their help for expanding our news and article base so that freediving news from all over the world can be covered correctly.

Update: Just to get the facts straight. The pan American record is not 174 but already increased by William Winram to 179 meters during the Mad Cup 2007.