Shark Freediving

Only 3 weeks to go before the start of the first world championships of the year; The AIDA Individual World Championships Maribor 2007. Wow, long title for a competition and it isn’t really complete yet either! I’m still missing the word freediving and the fact that it is only pool disciplines taking place. But I guess it already is long enough.

Looking back in my archive of posts here I found out that I only have made two earlier posts about this championship yet. The first is already way back from July 2006 and the second from April 2007. So not really intensive coverage yet, but we are about to change that. I’ve made a separate category for this competition, so it’s easy for everybody to check what’s going on over there. Click here to go directly to the special page or look in the right menu on the front page and click WC 2007 Pool.

As I am going as a judge to this competition, you can expect a daily update on what’s going on and a good collection of pictures, depending on the internet access I’ve got there. But I guess the organizer Sandi Bitenc has something arranged for this, because back during the last individual pool WC in Renens (2005), I was always fighting with him to get one of the available LAN cables to plug my laptop in, so he knows how important internet is. So Sandi, if you’re reading this, I expect full wireless network around the pool with good speed. Oh yeah, don’t forget to cover my room as well.

So as a preparation for my judge work I am studying the rules again, making myself familiar with the long list of rules and making sure I know them by heart. And as a preparation for the articles I’m going to write I’m also making myself familiar with the competitors list and their performances and what to expect. I could start talking now about some strange stuff in the rules, but as the rules are already set for this competition it has no use to discuss them now. So let’s concentrate on the competitors list for the rest of this post.

At the moment there are 26 countries registered, of the 36 AIDA affiliated counties world wide. From the different continents we get the following counties;

• Asia; Japan
• Oceania; Australia & New Zealand
• North America; Canada & USA
• South America; Venezuela
• Africa; South Africa
• Europe; Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden & Switzerland

So which countries are missing who are normally there? Well, the only one popping into my mind is Austria. No Veronika Dittes and Herbert Nitsch. But the list isn’t final yet so who knows.

On to the athletes. I must say it’s a surprising list to see, I’m really missing a lot of names who I was expected to be there. If we for example take the finals of each discipline from the last version of this competition in 2005 in Renens (Switzerland); there were a total of 38 different freedivers in the 6 finals (3 disciplines per gender; static, dynamic with fins and dynamic without fins). If we take a look at the current list of competitors then there are only 13 competitors on this list who were also in the finals 2 years ago. That can have a few reasons;

• They stopped freediving, but looking at the names that’s only a small percentage
• They are focusing on the depth world championships later this year; it’s of course quite expensive from people from out of Europe to travel to Maribor in July and later that year to Egypt. That was one thing that was better in 2005, both championships (pool and depth) were scheduled right after each other and both close to each other.
• They still have to sign up for this competition in the next few weeks. Herbert is known for his last minute entries into competitions, so are a bunch of others.

So which freedivers are missing from this (current) list? Well, first of all the Molchanova family is coming! As well as Natalia Avseenko. Russia is sending in their registration as we speak, so they will be added shortly.

With the woman I’m missing names like Aniko Hrabovszky, Suzy Kensington, Anne Marie Kitchen-Wheeler, Sandra Piovanicci, Hannah Stacey, Renate de Bruijn and Tanya Streeter. All woman who were in the finals in 2005.

The mens list has also some interesting names missing; Simo Kurra, Panos Lianos, Wolfram Neugebauer, Sam Still (winner static 2005), Ant Williams, Herbert Nitsch and the big name missing is Tom Sietas. It seems that some other freedivers like Martin Stepanek are really concentrating on depth these days.

There is also a name in the list I’m very happy to see there; Carlos Coste! Two weeks ago he already competed in Venezuela and got some good results, so it appears he recovered enough after his incident to be training again. Good for him!

Well, I’ll keep an eye on the competitors list and if they are some big changes you will read them here. The complete list of competitors can be seen here. And the official website of the competition is here. In the coming days I’ll take a quick look at all the results of the last years of the competitors and make a prediction who has a good change of getting a top performance.