Shark Freediving

Still a week to go before the official competition starts in the Bahamas. Some freedivers still need to arrive, but most of the  really deep freedivers are already present in the Blue hole. And while the friendship between the freediver is at a all-time high, there is also a lot of secrecy between the freedivers what they do in training.

Some just blog and talk about everything what they are doing, but some also blog and talk but don’t tell the real truth about what is going on. It’s all part of the game. And between the real winners it’s all about hoping that the other is thinking that you are going a little bit deeper then them and they try to reach you, while instead  you play it safe, and they fail at the surface. It makes up for a good poker game and the winner of this game will be known in the next 2 weeks.

So let’s make a list of disciplines and who is going to win the discipline with what kind of depth.

CWT Men: Herbert Nitsch 123 meters

While there are some pretty strong competitors for Herbert like Guillaume, Alexey, William and Ryuzo, I don’t think anybody will be able to match the emperor of freediving Herbert. Martin Stepanek is in the Bahamas as well, but as a coach for his girl Nikki Roderick. I don’t think it will be necessary to set a world record again to get first place, but as Herbert wants his record back he probably subscribes for just enough.

CWT Women: Natalia Molchanova 105 meters

Biggest thread  for Natalia is Sara Campbell. Sara already had done 100 meters beginning this year with a small blackout and wanted to be succesfull as the first woman to do 100 meters in constant weight. The last few months has been pretty quiet and as Sara Campbell is a pretty smart media-strategist I believe she has been training pretty hard in secret. But will it be enough?

CNF Men: William Trubridge 93 meters

William is doing 95 meters regularly in training these days. It’s like getting out of bed, brush your teeth, do 95 meters, dry your hair and back to work. I don’t think anybody is able to beat him. Herbert may try, but I don’t think he’s up for it yet. But then again, you new know with Herbert. Alexey and Guillaume could be the other guys who may come close. Maybe some other wildcards that may end high, but nobody will beat William Trubridge is he keeps it clean.

CNF Women: Natalia Molchanova 70 meters

The current 60 meter record by Natalia will be broken for sure. There are a lot of girls going deep in this discipline and doing routine dives between 50 and 60 now. Kathryn McPhee or Nikki Roderick will probably also do 60+ dives. But Natalia will make such a big jump that nobody will be able to beat her.

That’s my prediction for the moment. Of course I could be totally wrong, so let’s hear your thoughts about it in the comments!

One of the most important and crucial part of any freediving competition are its safety freedivers. Especially with depth competitions, athletes are depending on their safety freedivers big time. They are the ones who will get them up to the surface and keep them there until everything is okay again if something goes wrong.

AIDA Canada has selected a team of freedivers that will be in-water safety team during the world championships in the Bahamas end of this month. So some attention and respect for these guys is surely needed and therefor the AIDA Canada press release about them below!

The upcoming 6th AIDA Individual World Depth Championships will be held on Long Island, Bahamas from November 25 to December 5, 2009. This is promising to be one of the most exciting depth competitions to date.

The competition features fifty-one athletes that are considered among the best in the world and the freediving community is expecting new world records and many exciting dives. For a competition this challenging the organizers wanted to ensure they could offer the most highly trained and competent safety team possible, so they turned to AIDA Canada.

Doug Sitter (Freedive Toronto) developed an in-depth training and testing program to pick the best candidates from across Canada and train them as an elite safety team. Members were selected after a rigorous trial process that included both classroom and in-water testing. Further testing and grading continued over the AIDA Canada 2009 National Depth Championships in Thetford Mines, Quebec, during which the team provided all of the safety requirements.

Since then the members have continued honing their skills and teamwork in preparation for the World Championships in November.

AIDA Canada is proud to be sending the very best team possible to the World Depth Championships. Comprised of members from across the country, here is our safety team:

Doug Sitter (Toronto)

Lars Graefe (Toronto)

Soren Frederiksen (Toronto)

Philippe Beauchamp (Montreal)

Martin Lebrun (Montreal)

Aaorn Wood and Sergei Timoshenko (Toronto)

Matt Townsend (Vancouver)

The official event website for the 2009 Depth Freediving world championships is live. You can visit it at this address: http://www.verticalblue.net/events

Competition starts on November 25, so countdown really has begun. There are still some pretty big names missing from the list like Martin Stepanek and Dave Mullins. It would be a shame if they wouldn’t attend this competition. But there are more names not yet on the list.

Hopefully we see a stream of fresh up to date real-time news on the website. And while the website looks very nice, with animated backgrounds, I just hope it still has the flexibility to update it quick with loads of photo’s, video’s, streams, results and more news. Anybody found a RSS feed yet?

Okay, that’s weird! I was looking for some information about the depth freediving world championships at the Bahamas in November this year. It isn’t even on the official AIDA calendar! I know that AIDA has some problems at the moment, but this one should really be on the calendar.

Anyway, as the competition starts in around a month, it’s time to put some facts on the table, so here we go.

• 2009 AIDA Freediving World Championships
• Location: Dean’s Blue Hole on Long Island in the Bahamas
• Date: November 25 – December 5 2009
• Website: http://verticalblue.net/ (official website should become live soon)
• Disciplines: Constant Weight (CWT) / Constant Weight without fins (CNF)
• 51 Athletes, 17 female, 34 male
• 17 nations

Schedule

List of Athletes

With almost 200 registered freedivers competing during the pool freediving world championships that will take place in Denmark this month, it promises to become a big and interesting event.

Because of the combination of the AIDA and CMAS world championships, they changed the schedule (some athletes were not so happy with that because of wrong arrival dates and missing disciplines). So see below the complete schedule for the competition.

AIDA

Saturday 15/8 – 2009

12.00 – 19.00 Open training (Aarhus Swim Stadium)

Sunday 16/8 – 2009

12.00 – 14.00 Open training (Aarhus Swim Stadium)

Monday 17/8 – 2009

09.00 – 12.00 Open training (Aarhus Swim Stadium)
16.00 – 19.00 Open training (Aarhus Swim Stadium)
19.00 – 22.00 Verification1 (at Aarhus Swim Stadium)

Tuesday 18/8 – 2009

09.00 – 12.00 Training 25 meter pool(Aarhus Swim Stadium)
12.00 – 13.30 Verification (at Aarhus Swim Stadium)
14.00 – 15.00 DNF Event Committee, obligatory for national selectors!
DNF qual. performance announcements (at Aarhus Swim Stadium)
15.15 – 15.45 AIDA opening Ceremony
16.00 – 19.00 Freewc09 opening Ceremony at the Mayors reception.

Wednesday 19/8 – 2009

08.00 – 10.00 Open training 50 meter pool
10.15 – 12.00 Open training 25 meter pool
13.00 – 13.30 STA qual. announcement deadline (at the pool info desk)
14.15 – 15.00 First DNF warm-up
15.00 – 18.45 DNF qualification heats
19.00 – 19.30 DNF finals performance announcement
deadline (at the pool info desk)
National selectors only!
19.30 – 20.30 STA Event Committee
(competitor meeting room)
Obligatory for national selectors!

Thursday 20/8 – 2009

08.15 – 09.00 First STA warm-up
09.00 – 12.20 STA qualification heats
12.30 – 13.00 DYN qual. & STA finals performance announcement deadline
(at the pool info desk)
National selectors only!
13.00 – 14.30 Open training 25 meter pool
14.45 – 16.30 Open training 50 meter pool
17.15 – 18.00 First DNF finals warm-up
18.00 – 18.15 DNF B final heat (women)
18.15 – 18.30 DNF B final heat (men)
18.45 – 19.00 DNF A final heat (women)
19.00 – 19.15 DNF A final heat (men)
20.00 – 21.00 DYN Event Commitee
(competitor meeting room at the pool)
Obligatory for national selectors!

Friday 21/8 – 2009

08.15 – 09.00 First STA final heats warm-up
09.00 – 09.20 STA B final heat (women)
09.20 – 09.40 STA B final heat (men)
10.00 – 10.20 STA A final heat (women)
10.20 – 10.40 STA A final heat (men)
11.00 – 16.00 Pause
16.15 – 17.00 First DYN warm-up
17.00 – 19.30 DYN qualification heats
20.00 – 20.30 DYN finals performance announcement deadline (at the pool info desk) National selectors only!
20.30 – 21.00 DYN finals Event Committee
Obligatory for 16 best competitors or their representatives!

Saturday 22/8 – 2009

07.00 – 09.00 Open training 50 meter pool – 16 best competitors only!
14.00 – 15.15 Training – 16 best competitors only!
15.15 – 16.00 First DYN finals warm-up
16.00 – 16.15 DYN B final heat (women)
16.15 – 16.30 DYN B final heat (men)
16.45 – 17.00 DYN A final heat (women)
17.00 – 17.15 DYN A final heat (men)
19.30 – 20.15 Award giving ceremony
20.45 Farewell Dinner, disco and
Team Static ind the 5 meter jump pool.

CMAS

Saturday 15/8 – 2009

12.00 – 19.00 Open training (Aarhus Swim Stadium)

Sunday 16/8 – 2009

12.00 – 14.00 Open training (Aarhus Swim Stadium)

Monday 17/8 – 2009

09.00 – 12.00 Open training (Aarhus Swim Stadium)
16.00 – 19.00 Open training (Aarhus Swim Stadium)

Tuesday 18/8 – 2009

09.00 – 12.00 Free traning 25 meter pool (Aarhus Swim Stadium)
12.15 – 15.00 Free traning 50 meter pool (Aarhus Swim Stadium)
09.00 – 15.00 Judge assistants tranining.
15.15 – 15.45 CMAS opening Ceremony
16.00 – 19.00 Freewc09 opening Ceremony at the Mayors reception.
20.00 – 21.00 Verification (at Aarhus Swim Stadium)

Wednesday 19/8 – 2009

08.00 – 11.00 Open training 25 meter pool
10.00 – 12.00 Open training 50 meter pool
09:00 – 15:45 Free traning 25 meter pool.
16.00 – 18.30 Captains/Technical meeting an Verification (at Aarhus Swim Stadium)

Thursday 20/8 – 2009

09:15 – 14.30 Free traning 25 meter pool.
14.45 – 16.30 Open training 50 meter pool

Friday 21/8 – 2009

08:15 to 11.00 Free traning 25 meter pool.
11.00 – 15.30 CMAS DYN qualification heat in 50 meter pool.
17.00 – 18.30 Captains/Technical meeting.

Saturday 22/8 – 2009

08.30 – 13.45 CMAS DYN finals and Award giving ceremony
19.30 – 20.15 Freewc award giving ceremony
20.45 Farewell Dinner, disco and
Team Static ind the 5 meter jump pool.

Finally official word is out that the next pool world championships in Denmark will be a combined AIDA and CMAS freediving world championship. Below is the official news.

Freewc09.dk will be an event that houses two world championships. Both CMAS and AIDA will carry out their individual pool world championships at the event. Practically this means that AIDA and CMAS athletes will be competing by the rules stipulated by each organization at the same event, but not at the same time.

The website for AIDA is still www.freewc09.dk

The website for CMAS is www.freewc09.dk/cmas.html

We are very pleased that both organizations have chosen to go ahead with this shared arrangement and are happy to be able to provide the setting for at joint freediving event.

The schedule has been changed and DYN and DNF has switched places. The updated schedule is on the website.

Please remember to book hard floor accommodation at the gym. There is a limit of 100 people, who can stay here. Register on the website.

Getting around in Aarhus is easy with public transportation. For those staying in the centre of the city another good option is to rent a bike. Aarhus is a small enough city to get around in by bike, and it is easy and affordable to rent bikes at www.bikes4rent.dk. It may be a good idea to book bikes ahead of the event, as we are still in the holiday season in August.

The first information about the depth world championships for 2009 are beginning to come out and the wild-cards are also known. It will be interesting to see which athletes are going to attend this competition which will take place in Dean’s blue hole, Bahamas, from November 25 till December 5. Below a first email and the wild-cards for this competition.

Information regarding the AIDA depth World Championships to be held in Dean’s Blue Hole, Bahamas from November 25 – December 5, 2009.

All AIDA National Associations have been sent a pdf file containing the information required for registration of the athletes selected for this event.

For athletes from countries where there is no national AIDA, you need to contact AIDA International at info@aida-international.org. If no one else from your country applies for your discipline then you will qualify automatically, otherwise AIDA will arrange a selection method with the other candidates from your country.

Once you have qualified and sent the entry fee, the organisers will send you information regarding booking accommodation, travel advice, and how to complete your registration.

If you believe you should have qualified then you need to contact your National AIDA. Qualification is as follows:

- Each country may send one athlete per sex per discipline.

- If this first athlete is equal to or better than the minima (see below), the country can send one more athlete.

- In addition, the top ten athletes from the 2008 AIDA Ranking list qualify automatically as wild cards, and do not count in the above process.

NB if an athlete qualifies for one discipline they will not be able to compete in the other discipline unless they have qualified for that also.

The minima are:

women: CNF 30m, CWT 55m

men: CNF 40m, CWT 75m

(must have been performed in an official AIDA competition with ranking after the 27th of November 2007).

Information regarding the AIDA depth World Championships to be held in Dean’s Blue Hole, Bahamas from November 25 – December 5, 2009.

All AIDA National Associations have been sent a pdf file containing the information required for registration of the athletes selected for this event.

For athletes from countries where there is no national AIDA, you need to contact AIDA International at info@aida-international.org. If no one else from your country applies for your discipline then you will qualify automatically, otherwise AIDA will arrange a selection method with the other candidates from your country.

Once you have qualified and sent the entry fee, the organisers will send you information regarding booking accommodation, travel advice, and how to complete your registration.

If you believe you should have qualified then you need to contact your National AIDA. Qualification is as follows:

• Each country may send one athlete per sex per discipline.
• If this first athlete is equal to or better than the minima (see below), the country can send one more athlete.
• In addition, the top ten athletes from the 2008 AIDA Ranking list qualify automatically as wild cards, and do not count in the above process.

NB if an athlete qualifies for one discipline they will not be able to compete in the other discipline unless they have qualified for that also.

The minima are:

• women: CNF 30m, CWT 55m
• men: CNF 40m, CWT 75m

(must have been performed in an official AIDA competition with ranking after the 27th of November 2007).

Wild cards are:

Nicola Roderick

CNF WOMEN:

• MOLCHANOVA Natalia RUS
• AVSEENKO Natalia RUS
• RODERICK Nicola NZL
• MCPHEE Kathryn NZL
• FABRIO Karla CRO
• KITAHAMA Junko JPN
• WOLFER Bettina SUI
• LIVBJERG Maria DEN
• VON BOETTICHER Anna GER
• PHILIP Olivia K. GBR

Last depth: 40m
CNF MEN:

• TRUBRIDGE William NZL
• MALDAMÉ Christian FRA
• GIANKOS Manolis GRE
• KING Robert USA
• JAKOVAC Domagoj CRO
• ZBYNEK Josef CZE
• ERNEST Christian SWE
• LARSSON Anders SWE
• VRDOLJAK Tomo CRO
• JÖRGENSEN Mads Becker DEN
• TURRENT Luis MEX

Last depth: 45m (2 athletes)

Julie Gautier

• MOLCHANOVA Natalia RUS
• CRUICKSHANK Mandy-Rae CAN
• SLOVENCÍKOVÁ Jarmila CZE
• GAUTIER Julie FRA
• SCHRAPPE Carolina BRA
• HIRAI Misuzu JPN
• SOLOMONS Maria Teresa GBR
• AVSEENKO Natalia RUS
• MCPHEE Kathryn NZL
• WILSON Jessica USA

Last depth: 65m

CWT MEN:

• MULLINS David NZL
• SHINOMIYA Ryuzo JPN
• MOLCHANOV Alexey RUS
• GIANKOS Manolis GRE
• STEPANEK Martin CZE
• NÉRY Guillaume FRA
• MANA Federico ITA
• MALDAMÉ Christian FRA
• DAHLSTRÖM Johan SWE
• CHATZIASLAN Dimitris GRE

Last depth: 85m

AIDA Sweden has also announced their national team that will go to the Pool Freediving World Championships. There are competitors who are directly qualified, and competitors who are at the top of the ranking. This combined, they will send 3 competitors per discipline per sex. You can find the list of the strong Swedish competitors below. As soon as the final team is announced, I’ll let you know.

MEN

Ulf Dextegen

Static

• Q: Ulf Dextegen 2: ai World 2008
• Q: Weiner Gustavsson 8: ai World 2008
• 1. Peter Boivie 7.35
• 2. Johan Dahlström 7.04
• 3. Per Westin 6.59
• 4. Tomas Schiffer 6.38
• 5. Christian Ernest 6.37

Dynamic with fins

• Q: Martin Wikström 10: ai World 2008
• 1. Per Westin 202m
• 2. Weiner Gustavsson 198m
• 3. Ulf Dextegen 165m
• 4. Jens Schou 165m
• 5. Tobias Nilsson 164M

Dynamic without fins

• Q: Anders Larsson 9: ai World 2008
• 1. Christian Ernest 129m
• 2. Ulf Lindberg 129m
• 3. Jens Schou 125m
• 4. Rikard Larsson 125m
• 5. Johan Isaksson 118m

WOMEN

Lotta Ericson

Static

• Q: Lotta Ericson 8: ai World
• 1. Klara hansson 5.06
• 2. Annelie Pompe 4.33
• 3. Sofia Tapani 4.32
• 4. Yamina Enedahl-Meki 4.21
• 5. Emma Nordin 4.19

Dynamic with fins

• 1. Lotta Ericson 130m
• 2. Annelie Pompe 130m
• 3. Yamina Enedahl-Meki 129m
• 4. Klara Hansson 116m
• 5. Emma Nordin 105m

Dynamic without fins

• Q: Yamina 7a of the World 2008
• 1. Sofia Tapani 114m
• 2. Klara Hansson 100m
• (3. Yamina Enedahl-Meki 91m)
• 3. Emma Nordin 57m
• 4. Fanny Schagatay 49m

The athletes will be asked in ranking order about their participation. Sweden may send a total of 5 men for static, 4 in dynamic with fins and 4 without fins. With the women the may send 4 for static, 3 for dynamic with fins and 4 dynamic without fins.

(Thanks to Eric van Riet Paap for the link!)

It has come to my attention that the Pool Freediving world championships, that take place from august 15 until 22 in Denmark, will not only be organized under the flag of AIDA, but also by CMAS!

While I couldn’t find any official explanation by AIDA about this, it seems that CMAS approached AIDA after the cancelling of the CMAS world championships in Tunisia. They asked if they could come to Denmark as well and it seems that a deal was made.

The story is being cleared by people with high positions at AIDA and FFESSM. Wonder when we hear something official about this, because it’s pretty big news.

More and more information is coming in from different countries publishing their national selections for the two world championships this year in Denmark (Pool) and the Bahamas (Depth). Below are already some announcements for the Pool Championships in Denmark.

AIDA Germany has announced the following people as the official German Team:

• Women: Barbara Jeschke, Ilka Michaelis, Anna v. Boetticher and Olga Martinez-Alvarez
• Men: Martin Legat, Ulli Wulf and Sergio Martinez-Alvare

AIDA Canada is also on their way for selecting the pool championship team. It’s still small and has open spots:

• Women: Jana Strain, Mandy-Rae Krack
• Men: William Winram

If you know of any more announcements, let me know! I will publish them here.