Shark Freediving

During the second great camberwell pool competition on May 31st in London (UK), three women broke the 3 standing national pool records in freediving.

Liv Philip

Georgina Miller broke Liv Philip old static record of 5:35 minutes by doing 10 seconds more and bringing it to 5:45 minutes. Mandy Buckley broke Ruth Griffin her record of 134 meters by doing a 140 dynamic with fins dive. And the last one was Liv Philip who improved her own record of 104 meters with 2 meters more, bringing it to 106 meters. Excellent results!

With the men the winner was Chris Holmes with a 5:05 minute static and a 133 meter dynamic with fins. It was his first competition, so big congrats to him! Georgina Miller took the first place with the women.

As I’m missing the result list from this competition and can’t say much more about this. William Trubridge was apparently also competing and tried to set a 150 meter dynamic without fins. Surface protocol didn’t go as planned, so he was disqualified. No more info at the moment, but will update this when I’ve got some more.

Update: You can find all the results over here.

Pictures below are from JM (?) his gallery.

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Another video of William Trubridge his world record freedive to 88 meters in the discipline constant weight without fins. I already posted a video about this dive on Saturday, but the one below is a much better edit, with HQ video and some good soundtrack. Really inspirational once again. Don’t forget to click the HD button in the embedded video below. Enjoy it!

Remember Williams Trubridge his dive through the Arch in the Blue Hole? If not read this post and be amazed. Well, words tell something but video tells all. So enjoy the video below about this amazing dive.

http://www.shark-eye.com/flv/freediving/william-trubridge-arch.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.

This morning William Trubridge completed an unassisted, no-suit dive through the Arch at the Blue Hole in Dahab, Egypt. Wearing only a mask and a pair of speedos William swam down 55m to the entrance of the broad tunnel that connects the Blue Hole with the waters of the Red Sea, then 30m through the reef and 55m back up to the surface on the other side.

This is the first time the arch has been swum with no suit, and only the second time it has been done unassisted after William Winram became the first a month before in June. Underwater cameramen recorded the entire dive, and a video of the dive will be released soon on www.verticalblue.net. Amazing dive and congrats to William!

William Trubridge kindly gave me permission to publish his 82 meter record video here on our website. It’s was taken during his world record attempt on which you read much more here. Enjoy!

Download link

So you’ve got your world record, and now what? That’s what William Trubridge must be thinking because he’s already planning a new amazing project. In the next two months William will try to do a constant no fins freedive through the arch of the blue hole in Dahab, Egypt. This means he has to swim down without fins to 55 meters, then do a dynamic through a tunnel of 36 meters and swim up again! This will be an amazing achievement if he makes it!

Not many freedivers can say they belong to this elite group of freedivers. If we take all the rumors and facts and put them together we can make up the following list; The man who probably had done it first was Umberto Pelizzari, maybe already back in 1993, in constant weight. Other freedivers who did it are: Davide Carrera, Alun George, Herbert Nitsch, Natalia and Alexey Molchanova, Sam Still, Bevan Dewar, Lotta Ericson, Andreas Guldner and Peter Pedersen. So that makes a select group of only 10 people. Most of them did it variable weight style and a few did it in constant. So William will be the first to do it in constant weight without fins style. Good luck to him!

Here’s a video of Herbert filming himself while doing the famous dive through the arch. It seems like it’s no effort to him with the smile on his face looking in the camera. Enjoy!

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Update May 10th: Added Peter Pedersen from Denmark

On Monday William Trubridge did a constant weight without fins freedive to 81 meters. A new world record in a time of 3:02 minutes. 90 seconds going down, 2 seconds at the bottom and 90 seconds going up. As his trainings personal best is 86 meters he knew there was more then 81 and with only 15 days to go before William Winram tries to steal the record away from him it was something he had to try.

So today, with one resting day yesterday, William was fresh again to try for another record and he made it with an excellent 82 meters. Excellent result once again, and maybe not the end yet, because the judges will be there till Sunday, so still 4 days to go. Maybe 2 more tries to deepen the record? No matter what happens, William already did a tremendous job! Congratulations!

Update April 13th; No more record attempts for William as he got a cold which makes equalizing nearly impossible. They put up bottom camera footage on their site and there will be more footage soon! This will be a great dive to watch. If you look good you see the entrance of the blue hole completely at the top (Look here to see what I mean).

To be honest, I really hope William had a scuba diver a the end of the line. I see that he dives without a lanyard, so I really wonder what kind of safety protocol he’s using. AIDA should make it mandatory to use a lanyard for record attempts as well. Not just competitions.

Finally William Trubridge reached his goal of getting the world record in Constant Weight without fins. Today William reached a depth of 81 meters in Dean’s Blue Hole (Bahamas), breaking the old record of 80 meters that was set by Martin Stepanek exactly 2 years ago on April 9th 2005. Congratulations to William! So in May 2006 William did his first try, then again in October he tried again, and now finally he made it. And he still has until April 14th to get his record even deeper.

More info as soon as we hear from William. It’s good that I finally can mark this post as ‘Champion Freediver’, it’s well deserved.

William Trubridge is going for a world record again. From April 7th until 14th he will try again to get his hands on the constant no fins record, for which he has to reach a depth of 81 meters. His two previous attempts both took place in Egypt, a long flight away from his home diving site. I already mentioned then that it would be best to do such an attempt in his own perfect dive spot, Dean’s Blue hole in the Bahamas, where he lives and gives courses. And now the time is there that he will go for it at his home base, so I have no doubt that he will make it this time. Nothing better then diving in your own familiar surroundings. The two A-judges on site will be Dimitris Vassilakis from Greece and Karoline Meyer from Brazil. Good luck to William!