This week was record week for Carlos Coste and William Trubridge. Tuesday was Carlos his variable weight day. He dived to 140 meters deep with the help of a sled and went back to the surface free immersion style. The Venezuelan Carlos was underwater for a total time of 4:14 minutes and looked very fresh when he surfaced. The dive took place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, and is Carlos his 7th world record. Amazing guy!
Yesterday it was Carlos again who tried to take the existing world record in Free Immersion. Currently in possession of Martin Stepanek with a depth of 106 meters set in April of this year. After a dive to 107 meters in a time of 4:28 minutes he clearly had some problems and loss of motor control which resulted in a disqualification because it took him 21 seconds to complete the surface protocol. As stated in official regulations after surfacing you must remove your mask, look at the judge and say I’m okay and give an okay sign, and all of this should be done in 15 seconds.
Now listen up! This guy just went to a depth of 107 meters and holds his breath for 4:28 min under very extreme conditions. Then he surfaces in open sea; boats, currents, waves, etc. And then you ask him to be completely okay within 15 seconds, even worse, you ask him to do a certain protocol within 15 seconds. This is completely insane. All the time we teach people that the most important thing after a breath hold is to breath and recuperate. And now we ask the almost new world record holder, who has done something that no one else in the world has done before to show everybody that he’s okay. Of course he’s not okay! He went to 107 meters under water and it took him a long time! Let him recover for a bit longer and give the guy a break and wait for 30 seconds instead of 15.
Of course pool disciplines are a complete other story. Pool conditions can’t be compared with open sea conditions, and I’m fully confident that 15 seconds for the surface protocol is pretty okay. I liked the 20 seconds better, but that’s again a whole different story.
So to end the record week, we had the fairly unknown William Trubridge, translator of Umberto Pelizzari’s Freediving manual, doing a record attempt in the discipline constant weight without fins, were you swim down with only your bare hands and feet in a breaststroke style of way and go up in the same way without any help. Current record is an amazing deep 80 meters of Martin Stepanek. So William had to do at least 81 meters. For the last half year William had especially relocated to the Bahamas at Dean’s Blue hole to train very hard for his attempt. A few times a week he did 75 meters and his best was at 82 meters. But as always, the pressure of an official record attempt comes in to play on D-Day and after diving this morning to 81 meters and coming back at the surface in 3 minutes exactly he immediately blacked out. Too bad for him, but we will probably see him take the record soon enough in the future.
So the record attempts are done in Egypt for now, but that was only part of the Blue 2006 event organized by Apnea Academy. Next week will see the start of the Apnea Academy Instructor course, which will be attended by 4 Dutch guys and many others. One of these Dutch is our own team member Notis Stefanis. So when he comes back you can expect a very comprehensive report of it!
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