Livvy our Luvvy

Liv
Originally uploaded by Laura Storm.

As 2006 draws to a close, I wouldn’t want to see the year end without posting a few thoughts about the recent 5th AIDA World Freediving Championships.

I have written news articles for Diver magazine and the British Freediving Association about this, and once there are web pages published with these articles, I will add the links here. A few brief facts and figures for now:

Denmark won the Men’s, with the Czech Republic and France gaining 2nd and 3rd respectively.
Russia won the Women’s, with Sweden and Canada taking 2nd and 3rd.
Great Britain ( men ) came in at 16th out of 25
Great Britain ( women ) came 10th out of 16
Herbert Nitsch made a new world record in constant weight with an 111 metre dive
Livvy Philip made a new UK record with a 5 minute 24 second breath-hold.

The athletes’ views on the event have been mixed. I don’t think anyone could argue that there was scope for better organisation. Looking back on my own reviews, I have been critical and some might say, harsh. Unfortunately the British team were at the receiving end of some of the ‘challenging’ situations that happened, so if that has created un unbalanced bias, so be it. A good reporter can dismiss personal involvement and write unbiased accounts. I chose not to, as I have preferred ( at least in my longer article ) to recreate the sense of frustration and add some realism to the whole affair. Next time I’ll bury my head in the gritty stuff and gloss over the cracks. Links to appear soon.

Casting back my thoughts to the Great Britain team performance, I can only say that it was exemplary, at least in the way we behaved as athletes and sportsmen / women, to ourselves and to other teams. There were some lessons to be learned, though, and I hope we can use these as a plan to create a stronger team in the future. This world championship was the first where dynamic scores contributed to team positions. When we look at Denmark, three things have contributed to their winning men’s performance. Firstly, their supreme abilities in dynamic. Not one out of the three of them scored less than 173 metres. ( The UK record currently stands at 156. ) Secondly, differentials between individuals was low. Having 3 athletes closely matched in abilities is usually a better strategy than having a broader range. Lastly, their focus on pool disciplines. If pool disciplines take a nominal 67% of the overall score, then this is where to put the work into.

In the UK we have a double-edged sword. To train in constant weight there are only a couple of facilities ( one involving trespassing ) offering depths in the 60m + range, and are somewhat cool with subdued lighting. Does this make the UK an ideal candidate for pool training? Unfortunately not - pools allowing freedivers to practise are few and far between. In our cotton-wool society, we would rather let the untrained general public do whatever breath-holding they want to in public pool sessions, than allow a group of properly-trained and equipped athletes practice when they ask permission to. Still, we can’t blame society - we need to educate them, increase awareness, and try to foster relations with swimming pool operators where we can. The ‘we’ in part, being the British Freediving Association. Further still, perhaps more can be done to spread a net out for new talent? ( Sam Kirby’s Mermaid Challenge from 2005 was a great initiative, and the recent Maverick’s Crystal Palace pool competition put together by Matt Kitchen, another. ) Another possible thought would be to streamline some of our pool sessions, so that those with the ability have access to sessions where they can put in solid training time. Freediving is a fun, sociable sport, but we should make some provision for serious competition too.

One final observation from Hurghada, was to do with how we train during competition. Although it wouldn’t have drastically changed our final team positions, we may have scored a few more points by changing our training methods. Looking back, we seemed to put a lot of effort into sequentially making performance improvements. Nothing wrong with that, but we might have overlooked keeping a consistent approach between training and competition times. So if a particular individual coaches you in a particular way on your training days, the same person repeats this on competition days. The more variables removed, the more the scores improve.

In fact, I think I’ll hang on to that for my motto for 2007. Let’s hope for a good year for us all.