Shark Freediving

Today Sara Campbell did a second attempt to a 100 meter constant weight dive. And while she reached the tag and  took it back up, she had a blackout a few meters below the surface.

She attempted this attempt during the Blue Hole No More competition. A competition with wr status in Dahab, organized by Lotta and Linda from DahabFreedivers. 3 days of competition in all 3 competition depth disciplines with a maximum of 120 meters.

After the failed attempt Sara commented that she will try again to get this milestone of a record on Saturday, if she feels fit enough.

Judging is hard work!

Almost forgot to write about the results from the FreediveDahab minicomp. But here we go.

Wendy Timmermans won the competitions by doing a 54 meter free immersion dive on the second dive day. Also a new Dutch national record. Total points for her was 97. Sara Campbell did a 75 meter constant weight dive as well. I guess her plan on doing 100 meters has been postponed untill later this year.

Winner with the men was Marek Apjer from the Czech Republik. With a 75 meter dive he made a total of 146 points. Miguel Lozano improved his own Spanish national record by 2 meters to 72 meters free immersion. Alon Rivkind also succesfully added 2 meters to his own constant weight Isreal record by doing a 60 meters dive.

Below you can find the complete results of the competition. And here is the article about the first day.

It’s a busy month for freediving! Yet another competition starts, this time the Freedivedahab Minicomp which takes place in (duh) Dahab, Egypt. With the blue hole in front of them they got a nice little freediving spot to organize the competition in.

It could become an interesting competition with quite some national records being set and maybe even a world record. Sara Campbell is joining the competition and maybe she is going for the current 60 meter constant without fins record?

Here is are the announcements for today, day 1. With 10 men and 7 women joining the comp it’s a nice interesting lineup.

And yet another freediving world record for Sara Campbell. On day three of the Triple depth competition in Dahab, Egypt, she put down her third world record in three days! She made a successful constant no fins dive to 56 meters. Amazing stuff!

Later on I’ll put down a complete report about this amazing competition. Very promising for next weeks world championship!

Yesterday the first freediving world record and a few minutes ago another world record for Sara Campbell. This time she took the constant weight record with a dive to 90 meters. That’s the bottom in the blue hole! Amazing achievement, and that for someone who started freediving 12 months ago.

I wonder what Natalia Mochanova will do during the world championships next week. More info later on.

Just in; Sara Campbell just did a 81 meters free immersion dive, which is a new world record! She did this during the triple depth 2007 freediving competition in Egypt. More info later!

My favorite little freediver is not only doing well with her performances in the water, but also with the attention she’s getting from all the media. In the last few weeks I’ve seen several small and big news items, articles and other stuff regarding Sara and her plans for the (near) future.

Well, I must say that she’s presenting herself very professionally through her own website and now a new video. Take a look at this 6:29 min (her new static goal?) video she made!

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Pretty nice he! Well, she knows how to sell herself, that’s clear. Let’s hope it brings in some sponsors for her!

After reading the following article about Sara, which was a pretty good read, I was especially surprised about the last paragraph in the article which states that she plans to break some world records during the world championships; “I’m looking to set three new world records and exceed the [British] men’s records in three disciplines,” says Campbell.

Wow! What do you think? Journalist mistake or real deal? There is only the possibility to do two different disciplines during the worlds, but who knows what she has arranged right after the comp…

Few weeks back Sara Campbell had a BBC appearance and now once again she has been broad casted through the BBC. What’s she doing to get all this TV coverage? Oh yes, doing some pretty serious freediving and progressing like crazy! All in all, it’s a pretty good piece, the video that is, and you can watch it below.

http://www.shark-eye.com/flv/freediving/20070807-bbc-sara.flv

This weekend Sara Campbell will make her UK / Cold water debut at the Saltfree Double Dip competition. Here’s a short clip from BBC news about this. Sara is getting some good exposure these days!

http://www.shark-eye.com/flv/freediving/20070726-bbc-sara.flv

Last weekend there was an excellent dress rehearsal for the world championships taking place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Riccardo Mura and the ‘Only One’ Freediving Team (part of Apnea Academy Egypt) thought of every detail and organized a great competition called the 2nd Trophy City of Peace.

There were a bunch of national records broken and once again Sara Campbell was there to impress. She did a 40 meter constant no fins dive but she still thinks her technique sucks and can be improved big time. The other UK national record she made was a 70 meter constant weight dive in a time of 2:43 minutes. What an improvement in such short time period, she now really is one of the worlds best constant weight women out there. Federico Mana did a 52 meter constant without fins Italian national record and Andrea Zuccari did a 42 meter constant without fins Swiss national record.

The safety was also tested properly. William Trubridge managed to do an excellent 75 meters without fins dive on the second day, but on the first day he had a blackout. Peter Pedersen really wanted to get the Danish/Nordic/Scandinavian constant weight record on his name that is currently in the hands of Timo Jattu from Denmark with a depth of 90 meters. So Peter tried a 91 meter dive but had a big blackout at 18 meters depth, which is pretty serious. After that he was prohibited to compete in the rest of the competition. Too bad for him. Well, if someone takes Timo’s 90 meter record, Timo is ready to take it back immediately. Training is going well for him and he’s already hitting 3 digit numbers.