Shark Freediving

Okay, I must say I just love these Sara Campbell press releases. The only other people I know who do this so professionally are Performance Freediving International. Some good PR is always great to see! Congrats to Sara and I guess we will see some record attempt pretty soon…

5^th December 2009 :  -  Sara Campbell, the 37 year old World Champion freediver, who set a World Record of 96m in breathhold diving in April this year, has today taken Silver for Britain in the AIDA Freediving World Championships, being held at Dean’s Blue Hole, Long Island in the Bahamas.

Campbell, who has held four World Records in her relatively short career, three of which she set in under 48 hours just nine months after taking up the sport, is one of only two women in the world capable of diving beyond 90m. The sport of freediving requires the athlete to hold their breath, while self-propelling themselves to extreme depths, causing their lung tissues to fill with blood to prevent them from imploding under pressure.

On exiting the water Sara said: “That was an amazing dive, extremely easy for me and I kind of wish I’d announced deeper for a Record. The same dive normally takes me over 20 seconds longer than today. It’s incredibly motivating looking forward and I’m looking forward to challenging for the World Record again in the near future.”

The Freediving World Championships attracts the world’s top divers in this extreme sport. Sara’s medal today was the result of months of hard work and training:

“I have been training to these depths and beyond all summer. It is an extremely intense sport – rarely do we ask our body to perform to its absolute limits of survival, but I do it on almost a daily basis in order to increase my performance potential,” said Sara.

Sara’s achievements this year have been astounding; in April this year, less than a year after the death of her mother, Sara set a new World Record of 96m, also in the Bahamas. Since then she has twice attempted and both times narrowly faiild, to achieve the 100m mark.

“I have now made some big changes in my dives and training and feel confident that I could do 100m now. However this competition isn’t about records for me, it’s about the medals, and of course being with so many top-level athletes. Because we know what we each go through to train and make these dives, there is a very deep bond between us all. It feels like one big, maybe slightly crazy, family,” said Sara.

Today it was time for the women and their constant weight with fins dive. And fortunatly it went much better then the without version for the women. No blackouts!

Kathryn McPhee didn’t start today. She was already feeling somewhat sick and it hasn’t improved. Too bad for her. I don’t think this is the result she had expected from her trip to the Bahamas.

All in all, it makes an nice final list with Natalia at the top of the list for now. Sara Campbell, Misuzu Hirai, Jarmila Slovencikova, Klara Hansson and Olga Suryakova are the rest on the list for the finals on Saturday.

As I’m in a hurry, I have to make it a quicky. Below the announced performances for the women in the discipline constant weight with fins. If you look at the list you can see that Natalia Molchanova over-estimated a little bit what she had to do to get in the finals. 15 meters deeper then Sara Campbell, who announced the second deepest dive  with 70 meters.

Below the official results of today. And what a result list it is! Out of the 13 performances, only 6 of them got a white card. 3 yellow cards that gave point reductions and a massive total of 4 blackouts.

It was to be expected that so many problems would occur. Constant no fins is the most demanding discipline and everything has to be okay if you want to perform at your best.

The best 3 women will go to the finals were they can try again. Natalia Molchanova, Niki Roderick and Jana Strain are the 3 deepest of today that came up and didn’t blackout. Congrats to them. While Natalia is for sure the strongest here, we will see how much deeper the two other girls can go.

Photo by Jarmila

Today is the first competition day of the world championships in the Bahamas. First to go are the ladies in the constant no fins (CNF) category, were they have to swim down along a line and up again without the use of any fins, just by breast stroke. This is probably the most athletic discipline of them all.

While the opening ceremony was already on Wednesday, news slowly comes in. Unfortunately we don’t have much video’s from what is going on in the last two days, but asking around learns that everything goes smoothly.

Yesterday was the official first training day and besides Herbert doing a reverse variable weight dive (swimming down, lifted up) to 122 meters, it was another normal training day.

So, now the first competition day will start with a total of 13 women competing in the discipline constant no fins. Deepest woman of the day will Natalia Molchanov with an announced depth of 55 meters. 9 women are diving within 8 meters from each other, so it’s a pretty tight pack.

For sure during the finals it is going to be deeper then this. I’ve put  an extra widget in the sidebar of the website with the local time of the Bahama’s. This way everybody can follow exactly at what time they need to cross their fingers for their favorite athletes.

• Check-In Time: This is the time the athlete have to report themselves for the judges.
• Top Time: This is the time they have to start the dive.
• Announced depth: The depth in meters what they are going to attempt.
• Announced dive time: Important for safety reasons. This way  safety knows when to dive down or to activate the counter ballast system that can retrieve a freediver from the deep very fast.
• Scuba cert: If the athlete is scuba certified. This so they can breath on an pure oxygen cylinder to decompress at 5 meters depth. The people who don’t have a scuba certification are in bad luck and if they have a problem, too bad for them apparently.