Shark Freediving

Today was the opening of the AIDA Team World Championships 2010, which take place in Okinawa, Japan. Now that the competitor list is complete it will be exciting to see which country will win this comp. To get you up to speed, here is the event schedule of this competition:

• 30 (June) Opening Party and registration
• 01 (July) Official Training CWT and registration
• 02 Official Training CWT
• 03 CWT day one
• 04 CWT day two
• 05 CWT reserve day
• 06 Official training in pool
• 07 STA day one
• 08 STA day two
• 09 Official training in pool
• 10 DYN -Award Ceremony and Closing party

Below is once again the list of freedivers attending the competition. See my further analysis about the countries participating here.

The competition has an official Twitter account here: http://twitter.com/aidawc2010 and it seems that they are updating it regularly. Maybe I will put a widget on the site of our website so that you can follow the news directly. And of course the official website also has some basic info, but hasn’t been updated anymore in the last two weeks, so the best bet is to focus on the twitter account.

Sarah Witcher and Richard Wonka (The people behind the excellent We Freedive school) are also on site and reporting on a daily basis, including adding bunch of photos to their picasa photo album. Updates can also be found on their Facebook page including the photos as well.

Here the opening video of Team Japan.

Good luck to all! Expect daily updates again with news coming from the competition. And apparently things didn’t end in Greece between Guillaume Nery and Kerian Hibbs…

The AIDA World championship website is updated with the names of all the freedivers attending. Because it is a team competition there has to be 3 people in one men/mixed team or womens team. Teams with only 2 people or less have the disadvantage of missing already the points for the missing team members. For the men/mixed teams the following countries have send in complete teams:

• Finland
• USA
• UK (Mixed)
• Denmark
• France
• New Zealand
• Norway (Mixed)
• Germany (Mixed)
• Japan

And here are the complete womens teams:

• USA
• France
• Czech
• Russia
• Japan

So my guess for top 3′s are:

Men

1. France
2. New Zealand
3. Japan

Women

1. Japan
2. Czech
3. France

Thanks Jussi for the tip!

Guillaume vs. Kerian

The First two competition days are over, including an interesting weekend with some sled diving. Unfortunately the feedback about the results are all over the place an not really in a central overview. So let’s see what we can gather from all the noise.

Sunday was the day of variable weight and no limits dives. Ben Noble from Australia did a 100 meter Variable Weight dive. The sled is a super fast one which reaches a descent speed of 1,7 meters a second. Total dive time was 2:28 minutes; 1 minute to get to 100 meter and 1:28 to get backup. Anna von Boetticher does a 100 meter variable weight dive, but messes up the surface protocol. Stavros went to 150 meter no limits and also messes up at the surface. Both athlete claim to be high on narcosis. Both will retry tomorrow.

On Monday Mark Harris from the UK set a new UK Free Immersion record with a depth of 70 meters. Old record was in hands of Mike Board who set the record to 68 meters in March 2010. Niki Roderick did a ‘lovely and very clean’ 55 meters without fins. On Thursday she going to attempt a somewhat deeper dive. Guillaume Nery did an excellent 110 meter constant weight dive. Johan did 65 meters without fins. Anna announced 58 meters free immersion but couldn’t complete due to some equalization problems. Jakob Hansen did a new Danish record in the discipline Free Immersion with a depth of 75 meters.

Today Guillaume Nery and Kerian Hibbs did a little competition between them and both dived without fins to 70 meters. Both were successful! Guillaume did the dive in 2:53 minutes and Kerian a 30 seconds faster in 2:23 minutes. Guillaume mentioned that, while he had air enough, his arms stopped working around 20 meters depth when returning. Nice!. Mark Harris did a constant weight dive with his old but trusty c4’s to 70 meters. Pretty old school, Mark! William Winram did a 97 meter Free Immersion dive, which is a Canadian record.

Also, tomorrow Natalia Molchanova will try a World record attempt of 125 meters in Variable Weight. Looking forward to that as well, together with all the other people attempting some sled dives.

Thanks to Laura Storm, Anna von Boetticher and many other for reporting!

A few days back, on Monday, the 3rd Mediterranean Freediving event has started. The two week freediving event that takes place in the wonderful waters of Greece will host over 60 freedivers from 21 nations and will probably be the largest international freediving competition of this year. Even bigger then the world championships in Japan.

While next week will be the real competition week in all depth disciplines for the athletes, this week is all about training and sled diving. Because the event has ranking and world record status there will be for sure some interesting performances. Laura Storm is on site and reports;

The comp training is going well, apart from some suit rips here and there. The sled out here is fast – according to everyone who’s riding it to depth. Spirits are high, the vibe is fantastic, the set-up is simple but effective and in a great location. Ben Noble hit 92m variable this morning, which was seriously cool! Mark is back at his fighting best and achieved a 65m CW dive yesterday, after about a year without any depth training, also brilliant. Natalia is on track with a great dive to 110m variable, this morning.

So, it seems that Natalia Molchanova is on track for some interesting world records in the coming 1,5 week. Keep watching here for updates on this competition!

Kevin Sorensen

Last weekend it was time for the Canadian Western Regional freediving competition, held in horseshoe bay near Vancouver, Canada. The competition was organized by CAFA and included 8 male en 2 female competitors.

Winner with the men was Kevin Sorensen with 132,4 points. He managed to do a 5:01 min static, a 64 meter dynamic and a 40 meter constant weight dive.

With the women it was Jill Yoneda who won the competition with 128,4 points. She did this by doing a 4:02 static, a 100 meter dynamic and 30 meter constant weight dive.

Eric Fattah also competed, but only started with static and managed to do a 6:40 min long breath hold.

Complete results can be found here.

Today is the start of the Czech National Pool Freediving Championships in Zlín, which consists of two days of competing. With 48 Freedivers from 6 countries competing it will be a pretty big competition. The fun thing is the organizers have planned to provide live streaming of the competition to the Internet. You can watch the livestream here. Time of broadcasting will be;

• 28th May – 7.00 P.M. – 9.00 P.M.
• 29th May – 9.45 A.M. – 12.00 A.M.
• 29th May – 1.45 P.M. – 5.00 P.M.

Czech Republic is GMT+1 and the current time is:

I’m for sure going to watch this online! Will be exciting to see how they handle this and how the freedivers will be doing. They already wrote some posts about how they are going to broadcast it and how they made the underwater cameras. Interesting stuff. Remembers me of our own broadcasting experiments we are doing. Good luck to the organizers and competitors.

The Polish Freediving Championships for 2010 are announced and will take place between July 29 and August 1 at Hancza lake in Poland. This is the 7th time this competition will be organized, every two years since 1998. It will be organized as an AIDA International competition.

Registration fee is 100 euro for non-Polish freedivers who are an AIDA member and 130 euro for no AIDA members. 300 PLN for Freediving Poland members and 350 PLN for the rest of polish competitors. Due to the rank and character of the competition applications after the 20th of July 2010 will not be accepted. Maximum number of divers is 20.

Necessary conditions to be able to start are:
• fee payment
• medical statement (in divers book or AIDA medical statement)
• 18 years old (or 16 years old and a written consent of both parents and physical presence of one of them at competition’s place)
• presenting your ID document
• signed disclaimer of responsibility (at place)

Competition web and registration here.

That was fast! The competition is already over. There were three new national records set during the week long competition. With exactly 100 performances into the depth and pool, 30 of the performances got penalties and there were 4 blackouts.

Winner with the men is Hawkeye Parker from the USA. He managed to collect 368,5 points. Winner with the women is Rosibel Molina from Cuba with a total of 345,6 points.

Rosibel also managed to grab 2 national records for Cuba with a 6:03 static and a 36 meter constant without fins dive. I wonder which federation in Cuba is acknoledging these record, because I don’t thing AIDA Cuba excists. Anyone?

The other national record was set by Erin Magee with a 71 meter constant weight dive. She sets a new US national record, which has already been standing very long.

From an outsiders perspective I must say that I’m slightly disappointed with this competition if I compare it to the other annual versions. Maybe it’s the fact that Mandy Krack is not in the world record business anymore or that there are some big names missing. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve seen only one video in the beginning of the competition and that I’m used by now of seeing daily video updates from them. Or maybe because the much anticipated Formula 3 scooter event is not being mentioned somewhere (was it cancelled?).

With no doubt this was yet another excellent competition for the people attending, but somehow it didn’t meet up to my expectation of the big annual event it once was. Nevertheless congrats to all the personal and national records that were set out there. I’m sure you all had a great time.

Performance Freediving International (PFI) is back with their annual Cayman competition. The competition will take place from May 8-14 on the Grand Cayman island and it will consists of 7 days of competition; 5 days in the ocean and 5 days in the pool in all 6 freediving competition disciplines. The event actually has already started with a week of optional training and for the crew to set everything up. Daily updates are already coming in from Kirk and Mandy Krack on their blog.

There will be 11 freedivers competing in the competition, which seems a very low number to me if you look at the exposure PFI has in America. But it seems to be always like this in America, not only with PFI. Anybody any idea why the competitor numbers are always so low over there? Is it the high entry fee? Distance to travel? No interest? Give me your ideas in the comments!

Women

• Erin Magee – USA
• Ashley Futral – USA
• Francesca Koe – USA
• Junko Kitahama – Japan
• Jennifer Belfour – Canada
• Rosibel Molina – Cuba

Men

• Ted Harty – USA
• Hawkeye Parker – USA
• Ben Wiess – USA
• Joe Sheriden Jr – USA
• Greg Fee – Canada

Anyway, with 6 women and 5 men from 4 different countries it will be once again a fun competition to follow. PFI has a reputation in delivering high quality competition and video clips! So can’t wait to see what will go on.

Expect some updates on the site about this competition! It will be interesting to see if some records will be broken.

So that’s it! The most successful freediving competition in regards to world records is over. With 6 world records, a load of national records and no blackouts it has been an amazing 9 competition days.

Today no new world records, but 4 new national records. Ruyzo and Guillaume Nery both did a constant weight dive to 115 meters and were successful. Misuzu Hirai from Japan made a 64 meter Free Immersion freedive, which is a new national record as well. And Eric Fattah did the magic 100 meters in constant weight. Congrats to all of them.

William Winram didn’t start today. William Trubridge had troubles with his noseclip so he aborted the dive at 10 meters depth. So we have to wait a little bit longer for that 100 meters without fins, but if someone can do it, it’s William Trubridge. Dave Mullins reached his depth of 118 meters, but couldn’t find a tag. Afterwards it appeared that there were 4 tags on the plate. Just a case of narcosis? Herbert Nitsch also didn’t start, but for sure we will hear a lot more this year from him.

William Trubridge is the winner of the Suunto Dive-Off competition with a 290,2% score, where you could have reached a maximum of 300%. Carla-Sue Hanson is the winner with the Women with 211,2%. Congrats to both of them. I think this is a really nice idea and format for future competitions! Really understandable for non-freedivers. Even my girlfriend got it this time!

Congrats to all competitors who broke a world, national or personal record! And congrats to the organizations, judges and all volunteers as well. It was a great competition to follow!

As soon as some video reports arrive, I’ll make another update with those on this site.