The History, page 2
Also
introduced at this time was what is
possibly the most influential freediver
to date. Despite mere three logged deep
dives in the late 1960’s, American
Robert “Bob” Croft revolutionized the
science of freediving extensively.
Having worked 22 years in the United
States Navy, Croft was training
submarine personnel at a 36 meter deep
training tank in Connecticut, when
fellow instructors urged him to test his
limits. For the next 18 months, Croft’s
achievements competed with the best of
Enzo Maiorca and Jacques Mayol in
Europe. Croft was the first to freedive
beyond 70 meters and his achievements
were key in establishing most modern
scientific conclusions about freediving,
among them the mammalian diving reflex
and the blood shift phenomenon. Bob
Croft was the first record breaker to
use lung packing, the Glossopharyngeal
Breathing technique in his last breath
before his dives.
 Mayol
became the first freediver to reach 100
meters depth with his sled by 1976.
Croft retired early, but both Mayol and
Enzo Maiorca continued deep diving well
into their fifties, both having passed
100 meters by the 1980’s, and they
subsequently found world fame with
Luc Besson’s 1988 motion picture
The Big Blue. This beautiful, albeit
heavily fictionalized depiction of Mayol
and Maiorca’s 20 year long sportive
rivalry, is still considered the best
visual representation of the “Zen” of
freediving. At this time, there were
very few freedivers in the world; the
1943 invention of the aqualung had lead
scuba diving to overrun freediving, but
the success of Besson’s movie brought a
renewed global interest to the age-old
activity.
The New Amas
 By
the 1980’s, female freedivers had
developed to a point, where they claimed
a bigger place in the annals of apnea.
Already in the mid 1960’s, women such as
Giliana Treleani (Italy) and
Evelyn Patterson (Great Britain) had
gone beyond 30 meters depth. The
discipline later known as Constant
Weight Apnea was fashioned by women
such as Italians Francesca Borra
and Hedy Roessler long before
taken on by fellow countryman Stefano
Makula in 1978. But it wasn’t until
two of Enzo Maiorca’s daughters
Patrizia and Rossana Maiorca
took up records in the late 1970’s, that
female competitive freediving finally
took off. Later, athletes like Italian
Angela Bandini and in particular
Cuban Deborah Andollo took female
achievements deeper and deeper into the
oceans. Bandini caused a sensation in
1989, when she reached 107 meters of
depth with Mayol’s now classic
freediving sled. She went two meters
deeper than Mayol’s then world record,
making her deepest human being in
history at the time.
And Suddenly She Quit
In this period, competitive
freediving was at a peculiar crossroad.
From around 1958-1959, the successful
scuba organization CMAS (Conféderation
Mondiale pour les Activitités
Subaquatiques) had homologued the
bulk of early freediving achievements.
This continued until a combination of
medical and safety concern led CMAS to
suspend most of their freediving
activities around 1970. This didn’t
hinder record breakers, who still
increased the depth levels of humanity,
but this without unilateral standards,
resulting in a couple of serious
accidents.
By this time, Mayol and Maiorca had
withdrawn from competitive freediving
and others were to take their place.
Fully equipped with modern tools and
equipment that had progressed fast in
the 30 years preceding them, a new
fierce rivalry was born; the new actors
were Italian Umberto Pelizzari
and Cuban Francisco Rodriguez,
better known as Pipin Ferreras,
both emerging around 1990.
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Pipin
Ferreras, Cuba |
Umberto Pelizzari, Italy |
These two
well known freedivers excelled in the
category now called No Limits, a
term made necessary by the appearance of
new deep diving disciplines such as
Variable Weight Apnea and Constant
Weight. Neck to neck for the remains of
the decade, Pipin and Pelizzari took
No-Limits into the meters 110, 120, 130
and beyond, while further developing the
design of the diving sleds used.
The Birth of AIDA
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In 1990
Roland Specker, a
freediver from the North
East of France, had met the
world-class freediver
Claude Chapuis from
Nice, and they decided to
organize clinics so that
others could also discover
freediving. Specker and
Chapuis also set out to
create proper regulations
for freediving world
records, when in fact many
records were being
established without
homogenous global rules.
Specker and Chapuis sought
out a number of European
freedivers, aiming to unite
them in an association to
recognize records. On
November 2nd 1992, Specker,
Chapuis and a few others
created the “Association
Internationale pour le
Développement de l’Apnée”
(AIDA), with Specker
being its first President.
Several records were
recognized very quickly by
AIDA, which were to become
the reference for
freediving.
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The birth of AIDA
launched a period of political
volatility surrounding competitive
freediving. By 1995 CMAS again started
to recognize records in response to the
AIDA initiative, defining their own
separate set of regulations. Francisco
Rodriguez, who had become a key figure
in the development of No-Limits and the
broad media exposure of freediving,
developed a long lasting opposition to
AIDA. In 1997 he fathered the
short-lived IAFD (International
Organization of Free Divers), which
monitored his later records. In protest
to controversial decisions made by AIDA,
by 1999 in Italy was formed the
organization FREE (Freediving
Regulations and Education Entity)
also to regulate records. Most
developing efforts kept shifting towards
AIDA though; all while records kept
increasing worldwide.
Through
the early 1990’s, Claude Chapuis had
organized small competitions between the
freedivers attending the clinics held in
Nice, and the thought of organizing a
world championship quickly grew. The
1st AIDA World Championship
was thus held in Nice in October 1996.
It was a competition for national teams
featuring Constant Weight and Static
Apnea, with 35 participants each in
teams of 5. The actual nationality of an
athlete was not considered particular as
the need for filling up teams competing
for Germany, Belgium, Columbia, Spain,
France and Italy rose. A team
representing the United Nations
consisting of left over freedivers from
various countries was also ascribed.
Modern competition freediving was born
on that day and subject to improvement.
On departure day, Claude Chapuis shook
Umberto Pelizzari’s hand and said, "You
won; now it’s up to you to organize the
second World Championship".
1997 was a year of transition and
several freedivers created groups in
their own countries. AIDA continued to
certify records with 12 countries on the
contact list, requiring each of these to
create their own national AIDA
association. The AIDA baton was by then
largely held in France; Thierry
Meunier and Laurent Trougnou
initiated an early AIDA website to
promote the development of freediving
via the Internet, giving all freedivers
the ability to stay in contact.
 Umberto
Pelizzari kept his word and held the
2nd AIDA World Championship
in Sardinia in 1998. Now 28 countries
attended and the event was praised as
well organized. Jacques Mayol’s presence
created an emotional atmosphere, and
during the competition France and Italy
were neck-to-neck, mimicking Mayol and
Maiorca’s past rivalry, with Italy and
Pelizzari himself claiming the gold.
By this time,
many new competitive disciplines
were suggested by record thirsting
freedivers. Most were rejected;
others were tested and found too
light. Since around 1990, world best
achievements in a pool training
discipline later labelled Static
Apnea was noted in the margin of
the book of apnea. For a while AIDA
kept distinctions between depth
records set in sea and fresh water,
and briefly between short and long
pool records in the new discipline
called Dynamic Apnea.
Already in the 1900 Paris Olympic
Games, “Under Water Swimming”
had been tested but not repeated.
Combining scores from both length
and time achievement, Frenchman
Charles de Vendeville swam 60
meters in little over a minute, and
has so far been the only Olympic
Freediving Champion. This makes
Dynamic Apnea (in a mix with Static
Apnea) the oldest form of
competitive freediving.
By the mid 1990’s static and dynamic
disciplines saw increased attention,
with a major contributor being
Frenchman Andy Le Sauce,
a La Réunion residential, whose
ultimate limits in both Static and
Dynamic went unchallenged for five
years across the turn of the
millennium.
To History page 3
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