New Zealand Athletes competing at the 2009 Indoor World Freediving Championships

From the 17th - 22nd of August, New Zealand Freedivers, Kathryn McPhee, Suzy Osler, William Trubridge, Kerian Hibbs, Guy Brew and Chris Marshall will represent New Zealand at the Freediving World Champs in Aarhus, Denmark, the athletes will be posting here their thoughts on traveling to Denmark and pre competition reamblings, along with commentry during the event.

Special thanks to Mike from Ocean Hunter for his help, and Orca for the supply of Team T-shirts


Sunday, August 23, 2009

It's all over!!!

Hi guys!

Well, the individual indoor world champs is all over for another two years. The Kiwis have taken out one third of the available medals.

Guy Brew managed gold in both static and dynamic after Bjarte Nygard pushed too far and blacked out at about 240m.

Suzy became the second woman in the world to reach 200m and took a silver medal for the dynamic.

I was one of three people who competed in all heats and finals and earned a bronze in both dynamic events and silver in static.

For me exhaustion had set in by my third event in the first 24 hours. I was unaware of how tired I really was until I had started my dynamic without fins final dive. I aborted at 138m due to the immense fatigue. I was pretty disappointed as this is the shortest competition dive I have done in a long time.

I didn't sleep well the next night, had to get up at 6:30am to eat prior to my static and had lactic in my legs from walking to the pool in the morning and in my arms after plaiting my hair. I decided to take some sports supplements to give me energy as I didn't really feel I could rely on my own power any more and they worked for the rest of the competition. The static final was a huge struggle for me. I thought that it was going to be all over when I got my first contraction and mis-heard my coach saying 2:40 – a short time later it was 4 minutes so the first contraction was 3:40. I pushed myself through with pure determination waiting for my coach to tell me when I was in the final three. Eventually Chris let me know that it was just Natalia and I left so I came up some 30s after the bronze medalist Jessica Wilson. I had no idea what the time was, I'd just been focussing on whether my head was still clear or not.

My dynamic heat was 10 hours after my static final, so after the dope test and some lunch I headed back to the hostel for a lie down. The heat was pretty aweful. I was again really tired, but my head was clear. I was in the last heat so had the luxury of knowing exactly what I needed to do. I was told I needed 165m to make the A-final so that's what I did (kind of lucky though that Maria Livjberg didn't do more in the next lane – she was feeling like I had the day before). It was about 10pm before we made it back to the hostel for some steak.

Finally I slept tremendously well and awoke 11 hours later. I was so exhausted. The dynamic final was in the late afternoon so there was no hurry. The nerves had subsided as I was well used to the competition by my sixth event. I approached this dive the same as my other dives in the finals: to do as much as I can with a nice clean exit. I felt stronger again, but it was still a challenge. I didn't realise I was so close to the wall or I might have pushed a little harder...

I'm very pleased to have achieved my goal for the world champs of a medal in each discipline, consistent clean dives throughout and not letting the nerves overpower me.

It was such a relief to be all over!

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