Shark Freediving

Like I told in the previous post about this competition, it will be an interesting competition. In the mean time the first 3 days are already over and there are 2 more competition days to go. There are already some pretty strong and interesting results in the list. Lets go through the first 3 days!

Day 1

Adel Abu-Haliqa set a new UAE national record of 35 meters in the discipline constant weight. Maria Livbjerg from Denmark set a new national record in constant weight as well with a depth of 65 meters and last but not least Guillaume Nery set a French national record of 65 meters in the discipline constant without fins. 2 blackouts and 1 disqualification and 7 people with penalty points  on day 1

Day 2

Robert King from the USA sets a new national record in Free Immersion; 82 meters. Adel Abu-Haliqa improves the UAE record to 43 meters. 1 blackout, 1 disqualification and 7 people with penalty points on day 2

Day 3

Adel Abu-Haliqa set a new UAE national record in the discipline constant without fins by diving to a depth of 21 meters. Guillaume Nery improves his previous national record without fins to 72 meters (see this post). 2 blackouts, 0 disqualifications, 3 people get penalty points.

Remarks

It appears Johan Dahlstrom from Sweden really wants to get the magic 3 digit number of 100+ meters in constant weight. Too bad he has failed two times in a row. First on day 1 with a dive to 101 meters and second on day 3 with a 100 meter dive. Both end in a blackout.

Guillaume Nery seems very strong and really focused on constant without fins. As he has just started doing this discipline he’s already at great depth, and for sure he can add some meters more, so he will get in medal position for the depth world championships later this year.

Anna von Boetticher set a new variable weight record for Germany at 90 meters depth this morning, so she’s doing pretty well.

I will report back about day 4 and 5 later on! Results this far below the post or here a direct link.

By the way, Anna mentions a funny ‘accident’ with William Winram on her blog that I’ll quote here:

William Winram his face while going from -120 to -30 in 20 seconds!

William had obviously not had a good enough word with (brunette!) wife Michèle before he set off to dive, and had proper blond episode at 120m on the new giant no limits sled. It is a clever construction: When you hit the bottom, you pull out a pin that releases the weights. Then you inflate the liftbag, and off you go, minus thirty kilos, at ridiculous speed, back to the surface. Now Will, combining blond hair with a male thought process, decided to be extra clever and inflated the bag while the weights were still attached, to the point where the sled was beginning to move. Then he pulled out the pin and dropped the thirty kilos. You can imagine what happened next. The sled, now turned rocket, took off at warp speed, smacking Will’s foot but mercyfully avoiding his balls as it blew past him. He tried to grab hold of the kneebar – not a chance – and shot of the bottom attached only by his lanyard, which he had to climb along to get back to the sled. He spent the next 100m hanging on with one hand, while clutching his goggles and hood with the other one, screaming, in his own words, “fuck, fuck, fuuuuuuck” all the way up. At least he was screaming in his head, and gave me a very convincing demonstration of the facial expression he wore during the twenty seconds it took him to get from 120 to 30m. Here’s a picture