Shark Freediving

Still a week to go before the official competition starts in the Bahamas. Some freedivers still need to arrive, but most of the  really deep freedivers are already present in the Blue hole. And while the friendship between the freediver is at a all-time high, there is also a lot of secrecy between the freedivers what they do in training.

Some just blog and talk about everything what they are doing, but some also blog and talk but don’t tell the real truth about what is going on. It’s all part of the game. And between the real winners it’s all about hoping that the other is thinking that you are going a little bit deeper then them and they try to reach you, while instead  you play it safe, and they fail at the surface. It makes up for a good poker game and the winner of this game will be known in the next 2 weeks.

So let’s make a list of disciplines and who is going to win the discipline with what kind of depth.

CWT Men: Herbert Nitsch 123 meters

While there are some pretty strong competitors for Herbert like Guillaume, Alexey, William and Ryuzo, I don’t think anybody will be able to match the emperor of freediving Herbert. Martin Stepanek is in the Bahamas as well, but as a coach for his girl Nikki Roderick. I don’t think it will be necessary to set a world record again to get first place, but as Herbert wants his record back he probably subscribes for just enough.

CWT Women: Natalia Molchanova 105 meters

Biggest thread  for Natalia is Sara Campbell. Sara already had done 100 meters beginning this year with a small blackout and wanted to be succesfull as the first woman to do 100 meters in constant weight. The last few months has been pretty quiet and as Sara Campbell is a pretty smart media-strategist I believe she has been training pretty hard in secret. But will it be enough?

CNF Men: William Trubridge 93 meters

William is doing 95 meters regularly in training these days. It’s like getting out of bed, brush your teeth, do 95 meters, dry your hair and back to work. I don’t think anybody is able to beat him. Herbert may try, but I don’t think he’s up for it yet. But then again, you new know with Herbert. Alexey and Guillaume could be the other guys who may come close. Maybe some other wildcards that may end high, but nobody will beat William Trubridge is he keeps it clean.

CNF Women: Natalia Molchanova 70 meters

The current 60 meter record by Natalia will be broken for sure. There are a lot of girls going deep in this discipline and doing routine dives between 50 and 60 now. Kathryn McPhee or Nikki Roderick will probably also do 60+ dives. But Natalia will make such a big jump that nobody will be able to beat her.

That’s my prediction for the moment. Of course I could be totally wrong, so let’s hear your thoughts about it in the comments!

One of the most important and crucial part of any freediving competition are its safety freedivers. Especially with depth competitions, athletes are depending on their safety freedivers big time. They are the ones who will get them up to the surface and keep them there until everything is okay again if something goes wrong.

AIDA Canada has selected a team of freedivers that will be in-water safety team during the world championships in the Bahamas end of this month. So some attention and respect for these guys is surely needed and therefor the AIDA Canada press release about them below!

The upcoming 6th AIDA Individual World Depth Championships will be held on Long Island, Bahamas from November 25 to December 5, 2009. This is promising to be one of the most exciting depth competitions to date.

The competition features fifty-one athletes that are considered among the best in the world and the freediving community is expecting new world records and many exciting dives. For a competition this challenging the organizers wanted to ensure they could offer the most highly trained and competent safety team possible, so they turned to AIDA Canada.

Doug Sitter (Freedive Toronto) developed an in-depth training and testing program to pick the best candidates from across Canada and train them as an elite safety team. Members were selected after a rigorous trial process that included both classroom and in-water testing. Further testing and grading continued over the AIDA Canada 2009 National Depth Championships in Thetford Mines, Quebec, during which the team provided all of the safety requirements.

Since then the members have continued honing their skills and teamwork in preparation for the World Championships in November.

AIDA Canada is proud to be sending the very best team possible to the World Depth Championships. Comprised of members from across the country, here is our safety team:

Doug Sitter (Toronto)

Lars Graefe (Toronto)

Soren Frederiksen (Toronto)

Philippe Beauchamp (Montreal)

Martin Lebrun (Montreal)

Aaorn Wood and Sergei Timoshenko (Toronto)

Matt Townsend (Vancouver)

The official event website for the 2009 Depth Freediving world championships is live. You can visit it at this address: http://www.verticalblue.net/events

Competition starts on November 25, so countdown really has begun. There are still some pretty big names missing from the list like Martin Stepanek and Dave Mullins. It would be a shame if they wouldn’t attend this competition. But there are more names not yet on the list.

Hopefully we see a stream of fresh up to date real-time news on the website. And while the website looks very nice, with animated backgrounds, I just hope it still has the flexibility to update it quick with loads of photo’s, video’s, streams, results and more news. Anybody found a RSS feed yet?