Shark Freediving

Wow, what a 24 hours. Amazing that I’m not falling over yet. I’m writing this at Vienna airport and we just a terrorist alert and half of the terminal was closed down. So that was enough action for one day I guess. Yesterday in the afternoon it was time for the final final, dynamic without fins. And what a final it turned out to be.

First to go were again the B final women. Biggest surprise with that was Barbara Visintin who did an excellent 120 meters. What a high standard to set. But there were also 3 disqualification in this final. All girls cleared 100 meters. Then the men did also an excellent without any disqualifications which is always good. Winner there was Christian Maldame with 150 meters, which is also a new national record.

And then there were the A finals. From 8 final woman, 7 got a white card. of these 7 there were 6 national records and 1 world record. Just to give you an understanding of the high level they were at. I had my eye again on Alena Zabloudilova who had a blackout at 196 meters with fins, but for sure looked strong enough to come closest to Natalia. Natalia did once again a world record a came up at 149 meters so easy and fresh, it was almost scary to see this routine drilled woman doing her thing. There were just no signs of any exhaustion or anything. Alena cam close but it was not enough, 133 meters. Third place was one by Karla Fabrio because of her higher announced performance. She did 125 meters and announced 112. Johanna Nordblad also did 125 but announced 75. Too bad for Johanna.

The men finals was very interesting. William Winram got disqualified because he went under with his head due to a pretty big LMC. Five performances over 150 meters is just amazing. 2nd and 3rd place was equal distance, but Alexey announced 125 meters and did 157 meters. Naoyuki did also 157 meters but only announced 105 meters. Stig won by a big margin and with a world record of 186 meters. His performance was protested and first he lost his world record and got 10 points penalty, which still would give him first place. Of course Stig also protested the protest and he won this one and he got his world record and full points back.

After this it was doping test time. It took actually quite a while before all freedivers who need to do a doping test where ready to do their thing. I think I saw around 20 bottles of water lying around the doping test room, just drinking to do a piss. Fun stuff, especially because in my opinion current doping test is just a show and 95% of the stuff that’s being tested on is not interesting for freediving and the most important doping for freediving is not being tested with this test because it’s to expensive and needs another way of testing. Anyway, that’s a completely different story.

After this my official work was finally done, and for the first time in all the days there I took a dive in the pool and I took a bottle of beer with me in the pool so that Marcello and I could replay a famous scene from the Big Blue. It was just a start from what was about to happen.

Quick change at the dorms and then back to the Lent Festival where we had the price ceremony. It started raining pretty fast so we made it a fast ceremony. The sponsors had some nice gifts to give away and I think Natalia Molchanova was pretty happy with the multiple vacuum cleaners she got from sponsor Miele.

After this we traveled with two buses to the official party which was located at the ski slopes of maribor. Great view over there. Everybody got celebrated once again, including judges, staff, etc and we all enjoyed dinner and some drinks. Some people enjoyed a lot of drinks very fast, and already after 1 hour of being there we saw the first Japanese and Swedish getting a blackout and falling to the ground. Good thing I brought my red card with me.

At around 1:15 am it was to go to the after party in the center. It’s just funny how you can see some serious athletes who have been training for months finally relaxing and taking (too many) beers. It was a wild party to see the least and everybody was having great fun. I got back at the dorms at around 8 in the morning and got 2 hours of sleep before I had to clean up my room and get the taxi ride of 3 hours back to Vienna airport.

In the next few days I will let it all sink in and come back with one final article of probably the best competition I have ever been too, and I visited quite a lot. If I weren’t a judge I would for sure put some more energy in keeping everybody up to date, as well as providing more statistical data, photos and videos. Some more final thoughts later. Now it’s time to get a good dinner at the airport and prepare for the flight back. It was a good one!

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