The Blue Climate and Oceans Project - Freediving history for Britain

From 0 to 90 meters in nine months! Freediving history for Britain.

I don't think the immensity of what I have done has sunk in, even five days after the competition. Three World Records in three days – and the first person ever to achieve such a feat. The first woman to 90 metres on one breath. And the most amazing thing is that I have only been diving for nine months!

I never planned to attempt even one World Record, let alone three, at Triple Depth in Dahab. I had been scheming and planning around a bespoke event, with sponsors and media in spring 2008, but with training going so well, feeling strong, and on the advice of other top freedivers, I decided to give it a shot. After all, with the Worlds just ten days later, what did I have to lose... Apart from finally giving my game away!

My training began in earnest about three weeks before Triple Depth and progressed faster than I'd expected, mainly due to an error by myself in reading the markings on my rope two weeks ago – what I planned as a 73 metre dive turned out to be a very manageable 83 metre one – that was the day I realized the World Records were within my reach!

People have been mentioning that I might be the next one to watch since the Record Attempts in June when I broke the 60 metre mark, but in my mind, the gap between my then 65 metre national record and the 88 metre world record, was still utterly insurmountable. Nathalia Molchanova had instilled terror into the female freediving world and I think we all felt that her records we unbreakable. Mandy-Rae Cruickshank of Canada coming along and pushing the Constant Weight record from 86m to 88m gave us mixed feelings – Nathalia can be beaten, but now we've got to go even deeper to contend! Plus Mandy-Rae is another freediving heavyweight with years of experience and major sponsors behind her. A mere minnow such as myself didn't stand a chance – at least in the near future anyway...

So, that simple mistake of mis-reading an 80 metre marking on my rope for 70 metres, opened up a huge world of possibilities to me. I felt excited and scared at the same time. The expectations changed over night and all of a sudden I was doing something seriously big. I was no longer just looking to challenge the British mens' records, but was challenging the best women in the whole world!

Each training dive gave me butterflies, I was nervous and full of excitement and trepidation. Could I push 83 metres deeper? Finally with an extremely comfortable 85 metre dive and a far less easy 89 metres under my belt, I was into the final phase of training. Three days, three dives, the same order as the competition to make it as real as possible. And on each dive I turned early. My mind was trying to juggle the possibilities of attempting World Record depths in all three disciplines, and it was simply too much for me. So rather than a nice clean 81m Free Immersion, 89m Constant Weight and 56m No Fins, I made 75m, 85m and DQed myself on my No Fins by pulling myself up the final 20 metres. Psychologically not a strong place to be going into a competition from.

I believe that rest is as important as training, for me at least. So I took the final two days before the competition off, and used the time to rest my body physically, but more importantly, prepare myself mentally. I turned to my yoga practice and in particular, to meditation. I remembered a particular meditation from my teacher's manual called, Meditation to Know the Field. It focuses on gathering, visualizing and directing ones own strength, and then sensing the strength of the other athletes. With at least two or three other strong women in the field. I knew who I had to watch but had no idea of how strong they were ahead of the competition. I had been training very early or very late in the day to avoid other athletes at the Blue Hole so as not to give away my remarkable progress, but ultimately, on the day, each athlete has to announce the best dive she feels she can do, irrespective of what she thinks the others might be capable of.

I keep detailed notes of each of my dives, including the depth, speed, and how it felt, physically and emotionally, noting any unusual or interesting facts or feelings. I spent those two rest days going over these notes and saw very clearly that my poor performance on the final three training days had been purely psychological and that I was absolutely capable of pulling off three World Record dives. Through my meditation, that knowledge grew so strong that it became as real a part of myself as my name – it was undeniable, and a fact and the outcome was just a matter of time.

This gave me an incredible feeling of peace, and when I announced the first World Record – 81 metres Free Immersion – I was looking forward to getting up, preparing myself with yoga and meditation, and getting in the water and showing the world that I had arrived! And that was exactly what happened. I slept well, was calm and peaceful all morning and once I entered the water to begin my warm-ups it all fell into place. The ascent was certainly a challenge, but I love the feeling of strength in my arms, shoulders, chest and upper back as I pull myself back to the surface, It makes me feel so alive. Maybe it's the contact with the rope, something more solid than the water, that gives me that sense of reality and motion. As I broke the surface and did my surface protocol, I knew I had done it, but that white card and the amazing applause from all the divers and snorkellers around me, was incredible, I had a short moment of confused emotions – should I cry, laugh, scream...? I think laughter won the day! I was over the moon, utterly elated and kept giggling as I breathed oxygen on the surface to help my recovery. The congratulations both in the water and throughout the evening were amazing and I felt almost overwhelmed and embarrassed by the attention, especially when I had to stand on a chair to be applauded by the athletes and competition organizers and support at the committee event after making our announcements for the following day!

Day two was Constant Weight. This is the big one, the prize that everyone wants. It's the deepest, and most prestigious of the competitive disciplines (No Limits and Variable Weights are not competitive). I knew I could do 89 metres, but in my meditation I felt strong and realized that I could make 90 metres and that this was the number I should announce. Having pulled off a personal best of 81m Free Immersion the day before, everyone was hugely shocked to see that I was again going for such an ambitious dive. But most shocked of all, I think must have been Annelie Pompe of Sweden, who lives in Dahab too, and has been working towards a World Record in Constant Weight for well over a year now. She had announced 89 metres, meaning she had to do a clean dive and I had to mess up for her to secure and retain the title. I can only imagine how she felt when she saw my announcement. But this is the nature of freediving competition and what makes it so compelling as a sport to watch – with the diver order going from most shallow to deepest, the final results are never known until the last diver has surfaced and the judges have made their decision on the dive. The winner is the athlete with the strongest mind as much as the strongest body.

Annelie is a good friend and we have trained together many times and I wanted her to get the record with all my heart. She was diving directly ahead of me, and so I would be on the surface waiting to start my dive as soon as she surfaced. The tension on the water was palpable, everyone was thrilled that Triple Depth was turning out to be such a high quality, exciting competition – far more than just a warm-up for the Worlds, but a top-level international contest with the world's elite athletes battling it out for World Record status.

Unfortunately, Annelie wasn't focused and it wasn't her day. She turned early on her dive without the tag. I felt her disappointment, but with just five minutes until my official start time, I had to remain focused on my dive. I had visualized it a hundred times at least. In my mind I had made that freefall to 90 metres, grabbed the tag and swum my way back to the surface. Although, amusingly that night I had dreamed that the dive had taken me so long that when I surfaced, everyone except the head judge had gone home and I received a yellow card and penalty points for taking so long!

The dive went like a dream. I had two main challenges to overcome – ensuring I would be able to equalize my ears to 90 metres, and then the ascent, keeping it strong and relaxed in order to reach the surface and carry out the surface protocol. To my delight, the descent was absolutely perfect. So much so that I had air to spare at the bottom and could easily have gone deeper. Time for part two of the dive... The ascent was steady. I was kicking hard but finding my rhythm and staying with it. Not hurrying, not panicking, just strong and steady, strong and steady... Diving with only a noseclip I'm unable to use reference points on the reef to judge my depth by, so it is always a huge relief to see my safety divers at around 25 metres. The final part of the ascent was tough. I felt light-headed and had the sensation that I was spinning round the line, although I wasn't. I reached the surface and managed to carry out the surface protocol correctly and within the set 15 seconds to get my white card, although it was the closest I have ever come to not making a clean dive. The celebrations on the surface were stupendous – I have been watching YouTube videos of it and get goose-pimples every time (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPQOt5YJXoY)!

With two World Records now under my belt, I had already achieved more than I ever dreamed would be possible and yet there was still one day left. I had decided before the competition that I wouldn't attempt the 56 metres necessary to make a World Record in No Fins, but after another meditation I realized it was already in me, and that I could go for it. However, I knew that the competition for this one was strong. Russian Nat Avsheenko has been training for this one for over a year and fellow Dahab resident, and my very first teacher, Italian Linda Paganelli, had also already made one attempt on this record earlier this year. Even if I did manage 56 metres I was sure that they would announce deeper and take it from me just minutes later. More to amuse everyone who was expecting me to go for a hat-trick than out of any conviction that I would get a third title in as many days, I announced 56 metres and was amazed when the start list was published, to see that neither Nat nor Linda had announced deeper than me – I was out there on my own as the deepest female diver, again!

Much to my frustration I spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning and unable to fall asleep. At 3am I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't be diving and so sat in bed and wrote my press release announcing two World Records – what an achievement. However, eventually, as the mosques began their 5am calls to morning prayers, I fell asleep and three hours later woke, exhausted and uncertain as to what to do. I decided to stick to my daily routine, did my meditation and yoga, ate, packed my bag and meditated again and headed out to the Blue Hole. The excitement of everyone at the Blue Hole from the organizers, the athletes and even the waiters and taxi drivers who had heard about my amazing feats of the previous two days, was almost too much. I felt drained and confused and was totally undecided as to whether I would even get in the water. I did my, by now familiar warm-ups (I think the Kundalini Yoga warm-ups were something that the freediving world had never seen, but I expect to see many more people following the trend in the future!), put on my suit and got in the water. My first warm-up went well, but on the surface I told my dive buddy that I wouldn't be making the dive. Thank goodness for her level-headedness – we both knew I could make it to 56 metres with no problems at all, it would be the ascent which might cause me a problem. So, she convinced me that I could pull myself up at any time, thereby disqualifying myself, but I had nothing to lose by at least getting the bottom tag and trying the ascent!

The dive felt remarkably easy. And once I had turned and was on my way back to the surface, I focused on the relaxation phase in both my arms and legs rather than the work phase. I found a steady rhythm and just kept swimming, pulling with my arms while my legs rested and kicking with my legs while my arms rested. And I just carried on... All of a sudden, my safety diver was there, and I could feel my body becoming more and more buoyant and I knew that I would make it. Amazingly, I surfaced and carried out the cleanest surface protocol of the whole competition. The dive that I so nearly didn't make had been a walk in the park, and had put me well and truly in the freediving history books:

- the first woman in the world to reach 90 metres

- the first person ever to set three deep World Records in a single three-day competition

- I beat the men in overall points too!

- and by far the fastest progression in the sport ever, from 0 – 90 in just nine months!

It may have been a dismal weekend for British sport with the rugby and Formula 1 disappointments, but my hat-trick turned our country's fortunes and made it a competition I will most certainly remember for the rest of my life.

Freediving history for Britain

Introduction