2007 Pool Individual World Championships

[BennyB]

Hi all,

The pool part of the 2007 Freediving World Championships will be held in Maribor, Slovenia between 30 June and 8 July this year. Although this is an Individual event, each country can send teams of up to 3 people per sex, as well as any wildcards from the top 10 performances of 2006.

The competition is looking very good with 25 countries registering and around 130 athletes, which will probably be the biggest pool competition to date. The Slovenian freedivers have a proven track record in hosting big competitions and great facilities so we're expecting a very nice comp.

This year Australia will be represented by 2 athletes - myself, and Rhys Sweaney, a relative newcomer to the sport. Like me, Rhys is an Aussie living in London and did his training with Lotta Ericsson and Linda Paganelli in Dahab.

Wish us luck!

Cheers,
Ben

[haaico]

Good luck guys!

Cheers,
Haico

[Wal]

Goodluck Benny and Rhys !
Should be a good comp, plenty of excitement to watch out for. Ben I hope you manage to get a bit of training in before hand... and I don't mean drinking Lager?

Cheers,
Wal

[BennyB]

I've been off the booze for 2 weeks now  Though i've got a wedding in Poland in a couple of weeks, they're not known for being dry events...

Pool training is hard over here as you have 12 people sharing 2 lanes for 1 hour, twice a week. I was doing a max a few weeks ago and had a mid water collision which pretty much ended that. My dynamics at the moment are bad, around the 105m mark and my DNF is around 75m which needs improving too.
I need to hit the gym reasonably hard in the next 3 weeks too as i've lost a lot of strength in my legs/core. I did a 46m dive at Chepstow last weekend and it nearly killed me (6 degrees at depth didn't help either!).

So plenty of work to do in the coming weeks!

It should be a great comp - the Danes won't want to give their title up from the last WC, even though it's an individual event they are a close knit bunch and always work as a team. There's a lot of wildcards about at the moment too - lots in the DNY 170m+ range.

Cheers,
Ben

[Watts]

 All the best in the worlds mate. GO TEAM AUSTRALIA.

[BennyB]

Hi guys,

Well we made it to Maribor... Got 2 hours sleep last night before getting picked up at 4am for a 630 flight. to Frankfurt, then to Graz in Austria and then a car ride to Slovenia - so 4 countries in 9 hours isn't too bad at all    Though starting to halucinate a bit.....

Pool looks good but apparently is a bit cool, shouldn't be too much of an issue though might pull my static down a little.

Maribor is awesome, there is a big festival on here so there's tons to see. We're about to head off to see the fireworks before midnight. Then it's a chocolate and beer tour tomorrow afternoon and judges course Monday Tuesday then Dynamic Wed, Static Thurs and no-fins friday.

Rhys the other aussie is in the room next to me, and i've also met Kathryn from NZ. There are plenty of familiar faces around, and tons more to arrive tomorrow. Herbert Nitsch is here as well and I had a great old chat to him about his recent 214m no limits world record. Interesting stuff on all angles (dive, media, perceptions, broken equex'es etc)

Nasvidenje,
Ben

[BennyB]

Been a hot week so far, averaging around 31 every day with a couple of storms in between. I made it to the pool one day after the judges course but only managed 2 warm up statics before the pool closed    I'm not too fussed though as my normal training routine is 2 times a week and this isn't really different.

Dynamic is tomorrow, in order to space us out so I can coach each other through SP Rhys has nominated 35m and will go a bit after 4pm, Livvy Philip form the UK has nominated 65m and i've nominated 92m. Even with that wide spread we are all within an hour of each other so luckily it will work out perfectly.

Tonight we had the opening ceremony, we were paraded with our own country signs, flags and police escort stopping traffic through the main street of town then through the Festival then to a big stage where the deputy mayor spoke to us and curious slovenians came up to see what all the fuss was about. Sebastien Naslund gave a speech and mentioned a lot of countries, when he got to Australia he asked "why does this Walter character not join us?"... come on Wal, you're famous - get your arse over here and please your fans! 

After that the captains all got a special invite to a reception with the deputy mayor at the Vine, which is a wine cellar that has the oldest grape vine in the world growing in front of it. About 40 of us went in and had a little tipple while hobnobbing around. After about 20 minutes Liv and I decided a wine bar with free wine wasn't the best place to be so ejected ourselves.

It's been a brilliantly organised competition so far, everything has gone better than clockwork and I imagine tomorrow will too. Only bad thing has been the food at the college which has been pretty ordinary, breakfast is cornflakes and bread (no toaster either), lunch is meatloaf or something equally disturbing with potatoes or rice. Dinner - not the best so we've been eating out most nights.

I finished the judge course this afternoon so Australia now has another E level judge 

Dynamic tomorrow, i'm hoping for 110m plus based on current performance, give or take depending on the stodgy food 

Cheerio,
Ben

[Wal]

Good stuff Benny, sounds like a well organised comp. The food situation reminds me of cyprus, with the mystery meats and stale bread not the best thing before a comp. 
All the best with the dynamic mate, bust out a big one. 

[BennyB]

Mystery meats... ha! That's a perfect description.

Will give you an update tonight (or tomorrow in your part of the world)

Cheers,
Ben

[BennyB]

Update time.... mixed results for Team Australia.

Rhys was in the pool first. Being his first competition and being a world championship it was a hell of a lot to take in. Having a dynamic PB of around 75m, the judge asked me half way what I was expecting to which I replied about 85m I would think. We had to reassess that when he turned at 100m and kept going, he ended up with a stonking 126m, surfaced, got the noseclip off but unfortunately had a small blackout and received a red card. Nevertheless, what a hell of a start to a freedive career!

I botched my prep up completely and only got in the water with 4 minutes to go, and my last breath up takes 3 minutes so I was pretty much doing purge breaths within seconds of jumping in. Nerves were really bad for some reason and it felt pretty horrible. I packed, took off and had a bad first lap, good turn at 50m and a worse second lap... things just weren't feeling good. At the 100m turn I sped up quite a bit, as per my normal routine and thought to myself "no guts no glory" and went until I absolutely couldn't go any more. I surfaced on a lane rope and hung on, feeling a twitch in my arm but managed to pull myself together to do the SP ok. The judge, Bill Stromberg was smiling wryly at me while I waited for my card, kind of like a "nice escape buddy" smile and gave me a white card for a 132m performance. I was stoked 

I looked at the video later on and there was a fair bit of head wobble as well, I did well to get my act together.

Other results were good - first person to go was Per Weston from Sweden with 200m.... a scary precedent for everyone else! I think the best was the final heat - Stig, Alexey, Henning and a Hungarian guy. Alexey did about 190'ish, Stig 200m, Henning 195'ish and the other guy a big blackout. Will Winram did 193m and looked strong at the end.

There were a TON of blackouts, some of them very nasty. A russian girl just BO'ed underwater at 150m and ploughed into the wall, she took a while to come around. One big guy BOed underwater and it took all the safety guy's efforts to get him up again. Probably about 10 really nasty blackouts, and a few SP violations as well.

Anyway, that's the news for now.... static early tomorrow so need some sleep.

Cheerio,
Ben

[Watts]

 Goooooo  Bennny 132 you da man.

[Wal]

Hey Ben,
congrats on the new PB, 132m in comp is not too shabby ! 

[BennyB]

Like yesterday, a mixed bag after the static for Team Australia. Rhys was in first, and after some comfortable warm ups he killed 2 birds with one stone - he got his competition white card debut as well as cracking 5 minutes    Five minutes exactly it was.

My static was quite difficult, cold water made me start shivering half way through. Once I got to 5 minutes I ground in and withstood as much as I could and made it to 5:46. I surfaced, gave a clean surface protocol, waited and waited only for the judge to tell me that my coach had touched me as I surfaced, therefore disqualifying me. I was absolutely gutted, even more so for my coach who looked like she was about to go slit her wrists. We had a look at the vid that Pen took and decided to lodge a protest but unfortunately the decision wasn't overturned. Had it have been a Judge appointed safety then the protest would have been won, however when you take your own coach/safety then the onus is on you to do everything correctly. Stupid, but rules are rules and 6 judges all agreed on it

Dynamic no-fins tomorrow, then there's a 3L bottle of beer with my name on it 

Cheers,
Ben

[BennyB]

Dynamic no-fins was tonight and finally the Gods smiled on both Rhys and I at the same time. Rhys kicked things off with an easy 100m, though nearly screwed up by a wayward judge in the wrong spot.... the rules say that you've got to give the OK sign and say "i'm OK" directly to your judge, within 15 seconds of surfacing. Unfortunately Rhy's judge wasn't proactive enough to stand close to him when he surfaced, and another judge who was on his break and taking photos was standing in the wrong area, which was coincidently where the proper judge should have been standing. Understand? I pointed at wrong judge and said "judge is standing there", wrong judge shook his head and ran off, I quickly did a 360 and found the right judge and screamed "judge is there!!!" and Rhys was together enough to give the right OK to the right judge. Rhys got a white card, and I found the judge and gave him a blasting about taking his job seriously (as of this week i'm a judge too so I can say these things to them ). Anyway we had a chuckle over it and that was that.
 
I was up an hour later, I had a completely crap dive, was overweighted, my noseclip came off twice, once at 40m and once at 95m. Normally I wouldn't care but I was losing air and sinking even further, so I had to put it back on while kicking so lost a lot of momentum. After my last turn I was fading a bit so took 2 arm strokes and came up, grabbing the lane rope with one hand and releasing my weightbelt with the other to stop me from sinking (I was wearing 6kg of weight). I took a while to recover (translate: I was a complete space cadet) so my coach was screaming instructions at me and I managed the surface protocol ok and got a white card for a 112m dive. Just missed out on the finals as you needed about 126m I think to get in, the standard is crazy this year. Finals will be big tomorrow, all the right names are in... Stig, Henning, Will Winram, Alexey Molchanova, so it should be brilliant to watch.
 
But in the meantime, that's that for Team Australia. The beers went down extremely well tonight 

Cheers,
Ben

ps Wal you are in serious poo with Will Winram, you need to get your arse over to a comp pronto!!

[Wal]

Thanks for the updates Ben, sounded like a great comp. 
Congrats on your no-fins, and to Rhys, you guys now have the 2nd and 3rd best no-fins by an Aussie. 100m is pretty good for a no-fins in a first comp, think I only did 80 something my first attempt in comp. Ben you were only 2m short of the 2nd best Aus dynamic, you just needed some more wheatbix on that one mate. 

Would be great to see more Aussies and Kiwi's competing in the big O/S comps, the costs involved doesn't make it easy however.

Cheers,
Wal