Free dive

It’s always fun to come across something that just seems too amazing to be true. It happened yesterday in Alec Wilkinson’s New Yorker article about free diving. Competitors just hold their breath and dive in, going to incredible depths before returning to the surface. Sometimes they pass out before they reach the top. Sometimes they pass out after they reach the top, which nullifies their dive. You have to maintain consciousness for 60 seconds after you’re back on top where you belong.

For example, British diver Sara Campbell attempted to set a record with a 100-meter dive but after she came up, she took breaths and passed out. Wilkinson describes the 100-meter depth for women as akin to what the four-minute mile once was. For men, the record is 122 meters.

There are five disciplines: free immersion where the diver pulls him/herself down and up via a rope; wearing a constant weight and using fins; constant weight without fins; variable weight in which the diver descends on a metal device and swims to the surface; and no limits in which a diver descends with the device and is pulled to the surface by an air bag.

When the current women’s record of 96 meters was set, the dive took three minutes and 34 seconds.

I thought that was quite astounding, but there’s also the breath-holding competition, without the dive. The women’s record was set by a 47-year-old Russian woman: 8 minutes. Rather: 8 minutes!!!

A short abstract of the article appears here.