Shark Freediving

Homar Leuci

I’ve gotten quite some mail response from people who want to see more freediving news from different organizations. Not yet sure about some things, but for starters  I can of course contribute about the records and competitions from CMAS that come by in the coming time. Let see the response these articles get and then decide if I will stick to them.

So Homar Leuci from Italy is going for the CMAS constant weight and no fins record on October 3 and 4 in Andora (Savona, Italy). The current CMAS world record for constant weight is 83.10 meters and is in hands of Devrim Ulusoy from Turkey. The attempts will be certified by FIPSAS and CMAS.

Some more translated news can be found here. A video of a 2006 performance of Homar can be viewed below.

view

I already mentioned about Monica Barbero’s WR in the discipline Jump Blue. Also I talked about the discipline itself and put a video about it in the post as well.

Now there is the WR video from Monica. I’m still not a fan of the discipline, but I would like to know what you think about it. Leave it in the comments.

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.

And now for  something completely different. Most of you know about all the different freediving disciplines that are out there, but I guess some of you don’t know about the freediving discipline called Jump-blue.

When freediving records were getting deeper and deeper and CMAS was still certifying freediving records in constant weight, a lot of CMAS people suddenly said it was enough with these dangerous depths and there should be a sportive solution for it. So they combined constant weight with dynamic and they invented the CMAS discipline Jump-Blue, also called the cube. Take a look at the following video which displays the discipline.

In this discipline freedivers dive to 10 meters depth and from there on dive around a square with 15 meter long sides, until they have to come up and swim 10 meters back to the surface. Most people agree it is a pretty dangerous discipline because of the perfect shallow water blackout you can get from this discipline, but that’s another discussion.

Monica Barbero

Yesterday it was time for the Italian championships in this discipline and Monica Barbero set a new CMAS world record for the women in this discipline. She swam a total distance of 143,33 meters. That is 10 meter down, 8+ lanes (or 2 complete squares) and coming back up again. Former world record was in the hands of Katty Macias from Ecuador with a distance of 142,28 meters.

Michele Tomasi was the winner with the men with a distance of 147,77 meters. Devrim Cenk Ulusoy from Turkey is the current men’s world record holder with a distance of 159,54 meters.

Complete results of the Italian championships below.

Lidija Lijic

The competition was organized in town of Split, and it was under CMAS rules. We had some nice results, in mean’s part of competition and like usual even bather in female division. The winners was Lidija Lijic with 175,18m and me with 222,48m.

Lidija Lijic

Last week there was a CMAS freediving competition going on in Split, Croatia. It was the Croatian Dynamic Championships 2009 and it had some strong results.

The winner with the woman was Lidija Lijic who did a 175,18 meter dynamic with fins dive.

With the men Goran Colak was the winner, he did a 222,48 meter dive. He almost broke the 223,65 meter CMAS dynamic world record by Fred Sessa.

Complete results:

Goran Colak

Women

1. Lidija Lijic 175m
2. Helena Serdarevic 156m
3. Magda Milas 154m
4. Mihaela Romic 150m

*Maja Knezevic BO at 165m

Men

1. Goran Colak 222m
2. Davor Franicevic 186m
3. Nikola Storga 177m
4. Tomislav Svilicic 177m
5. Mario Brcic 177m

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.

Last weekend there was also a freediving competition in Marseille. A lot of big names registered themselves, but unfortunatly some of them didn’t show up. The interesting part of this competition was that it was organized both under AIDA and FFESSM (CMAS) flags, and competitors could chose under which federation they wanted to compete.

The French FFESSM rules are rather close to the ones of AIDA (unlike the rules of CMAS that differ more), so it posed no problems in the organization. And all judges know both sets of rules, so it was no problem having the competitors mixed.

Although organized in rush, after being cancelled because of no pool available, and then getting one just a few weeks ago, and although it was a small pool, with very few people in the organizer team, everything worked smoothly and perfectly. Nice competition and good atmosphere.

Morgin Bourch’is won the competition with the men. Total points of 249,5 made up by a 6:15 static, 150 dynamic without fins and 199 meter dynamic with fins. Brigitte Banegas was the winner from the women. 178,9 points, which was as much as the second place for the men. She did a 4:47 static, 107 without fins and 136 with fins.

Thanks go to Trux for his report!