Shark Freediving

Ah, I forgot this one! Bill Stromberg his own website, Apneamania, also has a yearly award show and he just announced the 2009 awards. Unlike  the ICARE awards, the Apneamania awards are purely based on performance and not on popularity. I just wonder where he did get the complete ranking of 2009 from, because I can’t find it. But then again, the big numbers of 2009 are proabably all known by now.

Since 1999, the World Freediving Award has been presented to the world’s best freedivers in COMPETITIONS in each category. This Award is unique, and is based on the AIDA World Ranking list from each year.

2009 is our 10th Anniversary, and this years winners are:

Constant Weight,
Natalia Molchanova, Russia, 101m / 101 points, 090925
Herbert Nitsch, Austria, 120m / 120 points, 090411

Static,
Natalia Molchanova, Russia, 8’23″ / 100,6 points, 090821
Guy Brew, New Zealand, 9’03″ / 108.3 points, 090711

Dynamic with fins,
Natalia Molchanova, Russia, 213m / 106,5 points, 090822
Goran Colak, Croatia, 233m / 116,5 points, 091114

Dynamic without fins,
Natalia Molchanova, Russia, 160m / 80 points, 090820
Dave Mullin, New Zeeland, 232m / 116 points, 090711

Constant Weight without fins,
Natalia Molchanova, Russia, 62m / 62 points, 091203
William Trubridge, New Zealand, 90m / 90 points, 091203

Free Immersion,
Natalia Molchanova, Russia, 90m / 90 points, 090927
Herbert Nitsch, Austria, 109m / 109 points, 090406

Some curiosities after 2009 are that Herbert Nitsch now is the first freediver in the world, ever, who sometime during his freediving career has been a World Record holder in all 8th disciplines! Herbert is also the first to copy Pelizzari’s feat to hold WR’s in Constant, Variable and No Limits at the same time. Then it’s interesting to know that Natalia Molchanova is the first freediver, men included, who achieved more than 100 points in each depth, length and time disciplines inside of the same year.

In November I talked about a new initiative: The Shark Freediver Of The Year Award. Well, it’s still in progress but I need help! I need some volunteers who can work out the details with me, like the rules and setting up the voting polls and help me present the online show.

I already found some sponsors to sponsor the event, but I can’t do it online. So if you have some moderator skills so that we can discuss the rules with the freediving community, or maybe you have some organization skills, sponsor skills, presenting, anything that can help this. Then let me know, so that we can produce the first real online broad-casted freediving award show in the world!

Time has come to make our own award show. As we weren’t too happy with the current freediving awards being given, we’ve decided to create a very special Shark Freediver Of The Year Award, that will be based on some clear rules in some different categories.

With all th news Shark Freediving is collecting together with all the competition results we’ve got, we have enough sources of information and enough followers so that we can create a great award show.

At the moment I’m finalizing some talks with some sponsors and we should be able to create something very very special! (Think real event, broad-casted to the net, real prices, community votes, etc)

Expect more in about two weeks time!

For the people who want to, it’s time to vote again for the ICARE Trophies 2009. ICARE is short for International Center for Apnea Recognition and Education and was founded some years back by AIDA ex-president Sébastien Nagel. Together with Nicolas Laporte, Frédéric Busslinger and Marcello de Matteis, they form the staff for this company.

There has been some controversy around the voting system that says that you can nominate whoever you want during the year and in the last weeks of the year the vote will start and 50% from the voters will count for the end result. The other 50% will be voted upon by the ICARE staff. Oh well… There goes real democracy

I guess when the World championships are over I’ll start with the SFOTY (Shark Freediver Of The Year) Awards. Any suggestions for categories?

Dear freedivers,

The nominations for the ICARE Trophies 2009 are now closed, and we would be able to start with the election part untill December 17th, 2009. You will find below the nominate persons for each category, and a recapitulative of the election’s functionment.

Each individual personne could vote for ONLY ONE NOMINATED PERSON in each category, to the following address only : icare.lausanne@bluewin.ch

The nominated persons for 2009 are (by alphabetical order within each category) :

BEST FEMALE FREEDIVER 2009

• Sara CAMPBELL, United Kingdom
• Kathryn McPHEE, New Zealand
• Natalia MOLCHANOVA, Russia
• Jana STRAIN, Canada

BEST MALE FREEDIVER 2009

• Alexey MOLCHANOV, Russia
• Dave MULLINS, New Zealand
• Martin STEPANEK, Czech Republic
• William TRUEBRIDGE, New Zealand

BEST FEMALE REVELATION 2009

• Lidija LIJIC, Croatia
• Maria Livbjerg, Denmark
• Susy OSLER, New Zealand
• Saana PARTINEN, Finland

BEST MALE REVELATION 2009

• Goran COLAK, Croatia
• Jorénik EKSTRÖM, Finland
• Bjarte NYGARD, Norway
• Martin PETRISKO, Czech Repuplic

BEST NATIONAL INSTITUTION 2009

• AIDA Croatia, Croatia
• AIDA New Zealand
• Dansk Fridykkerforbund (AIDA Denmark), Denmark
• Freediving Team of Finland (AIDA Finland), Finland

BEST CAPTAIN/COACH 2009

• Kerian HIBBS, New Zealand
• Grégory PIAZZOLA, France
• Bill STRÖMBERG, Sweden
• Ivo TRUXA, Czech Republic

BEST INTERNATIONAL JUDGE 2009

• Melita ADANY, Croatiaa
• Peter BOJOVIC, Serbia
• Grant GRAVES, USA
• Kimmo LAHTINEN, Finland

ALL THESE INFORMATIONS COULD ALSO BE FOUND IN OUR NEW TEMPORARY WEBSITE

Best regards,

I C A R E
International Center for Apnea Recognition and Education