Behind every success, there’s 100 failures, trials, and mistakes to correct.
As I’m preparing for the last freediving competition of the year, in Dahab’s Blue Hole, I look back at my past season and the 6 depth competitions I had, which have proved to be huge learning experiences:
Freediving World Cup: first competition of the year in May, I was aiming to complete 100m deep during my competition.
I blackout at -15m on day 1 and got disqualified from the whole competition.
It was one of the hardest moments of the year emotionally, and it took me several performance books to get over it and find the strenght to compete again.
——>LESSON LEARNED: I was reminded about nutrients and the importance of fueling the body with carbs when aiming for performance. Also being humble and respect my feeling in the water.
Nice Abysse Contest at Cipa Freediving: it was June 20, on my birthday, and my aim was to regain my confidence after the deep blackout.
I won gold together with Guillaume Nery with an 82m CWT, but overall I wasn’t happy with my dive and the feelings I had.
——>LESSON LEARNED: work on my relaxation more, work on relaxation again, and work on relaxation some more
French Championship: July 2-3, I changed disciplines so that I could detach from the monofin.
I competed and did PB in both FIM and CWTB, and won Gold on both days, and finally the feelings matched with the diver I wanted to be
——>LESSON LEARNED: when reaching a plateau in a discipline, change discipline! Learn something new!
Caribbean Cup in Roatan: I had a great progression in CWTB, and all my dives in trainings were personal bests.
I did a PB on competition day 1 and silver medal with 85m, and had a surface BO on competition day 2 with 88m.
——>LESSON LEARNED: Looking back at the videos I learned so much from the BO.
One of the safeties noticed that on every dive I had a tendency to exhale too much air before surfacing, causing a sudden drop of oxygen when I actually needed it most.
World Championships : 4th place in CWT and 5th place CWTB and a whole new world finally opened up to me as I realised one huge mistake I had been doing since I started deep freediving.
——>LESSON LEARNED: drinking 2 litres of water before a deep dive is not a good idea, and it took me 3 years of deep diving to find out!!!
Italian Championships: I was going for World Record in CWTB with 82m after travelling 38 hours from Roatan with water at 7 degrees.
I completed the dive a little hypoxic with a LMC, and flashed a too quick OK sign and went in to celebrate. The OK sign wasn’t recognised by the judges, hence I lost the Italian Champion title and the WR.
Thankfully on day 2 I completed the correct protocol on my CWT dive at -82m, which won me a silver medal and a vice Italian Champion title.
——>LESSON LEARNED: Never celebrate too early and keep the focus until the protocol is completed correctly.
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