Shark Freediving

Veljano Zanki

Last Sunday there was a depth competition in Limassol, Cyprus. This competition was organized by AIDA Cyprus and while I don’t have the complete results yet, there was at least one national record broken during this competition.

Croatian freediver Veljano Zanki set a new national record in the discipline constant weight with fins by diving to a depth of 85 meters. Veljano improved his own previous national record he set in 2008 by 5 meters. No further information is available right now, but I’ll update this page as soon as I have some more.

Last Saturday it was time for the famous Rhein Main Cup 2009 version that takes place every year in Wiesbaden, Germany. It’s been a while since I last visited a freediving competition, so we planned to go visit it with Team Sharkbait.

As always the organisation ran without any problems after all these years of experience. It was good to see some new and old friends, so we could chat the time away. With 43 competitors from 11 different countries it was a good international field.

Robert Cetler from Poland won the men competition with a 7:46 minute static and a 175 meter dynamic with fins dive. Both are new national records and delivered him 180,7 points.

Second place was for Goran Colak from Croatia with 175,4 points. He did a 8:02 national record. Michael Mrozowski from Poland set a new national record in dynamic without fins by doing a distance of 158 meters.

Lidija Lijik from Croatia won the women competition with a 4:36 static and a 140 meter dynamic with fins. Total points 125,2.

From the 86 performances done there were 11 performance that resulted in zero points. I don’t know exactly how many blackouts there were, but I saw at least 3, with one pretty serious one after doing a 135 meter dynamic without fins.

All in all it was fun to be at a competition again. Team member Sanne Buurma wrote a article on his personal experience and put a video and some photo’s online. Complete results can be found here.

Andrea Zuccari from Switzerland is on a roll and has set a total of 4 Swiss records in 2 weeks. On September 20 he started with a constant without fins dive to 55 meters in a time of 1:56 minutes.

Two days later, on September 22, he set a new Swiss record by doing a 77 meter constant with fins dive in 2:19 minutes. The next day he sets his third national record of 75 meters in the discipline free immersion with a dive time of 2:45 minutes.

Yesterday he adds number four by doing a 120 meter no limits dive in a dive time of 2:45 minutes. Andrea performed all the records in Sharm el Sheikh and is an Apnea Academy instructor. Congrats to Andrea!

PS: I just read that another Apnea Academy instructor is on a roll. Glenn Venghaus from Amsterdam (the Netherlands) just did a constant without fins dive to 50 meters in 2:07. That’s an unofficial Dutch record, which currently stands at 44 meters by Daan Verhoeven. Apnea Academy guys are eating the right pasta!

Yesterday Andy Guldner from Germany set a new national record in the discipline constant weight with fins in sea. He dove with his monofin to a depth of 72 meters in Dahab, Egypt. It’s one meter deeper than his own previous record he set exactly one year ago. Andy about his dive:

4 Minutes until official TOP.I did my last breathes and made my way down into the blue abyss.It was very nice…no problems with ears, good bloodshift and pure calmness. Thats how a dive should be.On the bottom weight I was searching for the TAG and after a few second I found it on the BOTTOM PLATE The way up was easy. Back on surface I performed a perfect surface protocol and the I had THE RECORD.Exactly one year since the last record.

During the NoTanx London freediving competition on July 11th Alan Barber set a new UK national freediving record in the discipline dynamic with fins. He swam 202 meters underwater on a single breath of air.

Somehow it seems easier to publish a press release about such a great performance, than somehow publishing the whole competition results on Internet. Too bad.

But anyway, congrats to Alan. It’s a great performance, and it appears he’s not satisfied yet. He wants to break Alexey Molchanova’s record of 250 meters. Good luck!

Local news from Germany reports that the german national record in Free Immersion in lake has been broken 2 times in the last week. During the Swiss Championships on July 25 Oli Haug broke his own record with a dive of 62 meters.

Jonas Krahn was next and he broke the record again on July 28 during the Poland Crystal Clearwater competition. He set a new record by doing a free immersion dive tot 66 meters. That brings the total number of German national records that are broken this year to 10!

And the results of day 2 are in. Another bunch of great performances are added to the results of day 1. And as a short add-on; Mullins his 232 meter without fins performance yesterday took him 4:30 minutes to complete.

Guy Brew increased his dynamic personal best to 226m, while four other competitors did dynamics over 150m. Kathryn McPhee reclaimed her dynamic national record with a 191m dive.

This weekend there is the Wellington Winter Champs in New Zealand. It consists of a 2 day pool competition and as you know I normally post results about weekend competition when they are over. But when results like this are already being done on day 1, it is for sure interesting to have a look what is going on over there.

Dave Mullins

5 national records! And if the correct type of judge was present the competition would have world record status and we would have 2 new world records as well. Dave Mullins improved the current world record in dynamic without fins with 18 meter to 232 meters. Kathryn McPhee did a 152 meter dynamic without fins, breaking her own world record by 1 meter. Guy Brew set a new national record in Static with a big 9:03 breath hold, which is the longest ever in competition.

All in all amazing results already in this competition. I’m curious what day 2 will bring. And it’s good to see Suzy Osler (formerly known as Kensignton) back into action! Bring on day 2! Press release about day 1 below.

An astonishing day first up, with five national records and some huge dives. Guy Brew kicked things off with a massive 9:03 static, with Dave Mullins doing a 232m no fins dynamic; 18m more than his current world record! Kathryn McPhee followed up with a 152m dive, pushing her national record out to 1m more than her world record, then Ruth Griffin and Suzy Osler both chimed in with dynamic records for their respective countries; with 164m for Britain and 188m for New Zealand. Phil Clayton also missed out on a British dynamics record when he blacked out at 191m.

Conratulations to all the divers, there were impressive performances across the board. Also a big congrats to our recreational grade divers: Darrell, Joy, Sam and Graham!

Days 4 and 5 are also over from the 2nd Mediterranean freediving competition in Greece. See also the announcement and the report about day 1,2 and 3.

Day 4

Again some deep performances and national records. Guillaume Nery, as already reported, broke his own national CNF record with a dive to 75 meters without fins. Nicholas Guerry from Switzerland did a constant without fins national record to 53 meters. 1 blackout, 2 disqualifications and 8 penalties.

Jesper Stechmann

Day 5

The last competition day and it brought again some national records and drama. Adel Abu-Haliqa from the UAE set a new national record in the discipline free immersion with a dive to 37 meters. Anna von Boetticher from Germany set a new national constant weight record with a dive to 60 meters and Jesper Stechmann from Denmark got a new constant weight national record by diving to 91 meters.

Johan Dahlstrom really wanted to reach 3 digit depths but also today he failed and had a blackout at attempting a 100 meter deep dive. Jakob Hansen, who also tried to grab the Danish national constant record by diving to 91 meters, had a blackout. 2 blackouts, 2 disqualifications, 7 penalties.

Guillaume Nery

End Result

Of the 5 women who attended to competition Liv Philip from the UK won the 5 day competition with a 60 constant dive, a 42 without fins dive and a 50 meter free immersion dive.

Strongest of the 20 men competing in this competition was Guillaume Nery with a 90 meter constant dive, a 75 meter without fins dive and a 80 meters free immersion dive.

A total of 9 national records were set during this competition.

You can find an excellent gallery of pictures of the competition by Kimmo Lahtinen over here.

Complete results below!

Today Guillaume Nery improved his 72 meter constant without fins national French record to a depth of 75 meters! Guillaume has made big progress during the competition he is doing these performances in. It seems that he’s interested in becoming one of the top CNF specialists out there.

It took him 3:03 minutes to take the tag at 75 meters and return safely to the surface. It was the easiest dive he has done during this competition. Tomorrow he will relax and do a Free Immersion dive on the last day of the competition.