Millstätter See

In our freediving section, I have written a great deal about this sport, made a number of interviews, but so far I have not seen a competition live. Organizing and financing such an event costs a lot of money, so it is not like going to a soccer game, the number of competitions held per year is around 6-10 in the world. The 2nd Heart of Europe - Carinthian Open was relatively close to Hungary (six hours drive from Budapest) and it had three Hungarian participants, plus Herbert Nitsch announced five world record attempts, so going to Millstatt seemed to be a great idea.

As you could read in the first part of our coverage of the event, the Millstätter Lake was a perfect setting for the event. The freedivers, who were there last year as well, told me that the Carinthian Open is famous for its pleasant atmosphere. I can only echo that. Smiling seemed to be contagious, the freedivers were supporting each other, clapping, cheering and they were easy to approach.

This part of the coverage is devoted to them, the 28 freedivers from seven different nations.

Herbert Nitsch, the King of the Lake

Royals of the lake

The star of the competition was definitely the Austrian Herbert Nitsch. There are only about ten freedivers in the world, who are capable for reaching depths and distances he can. It is very hard to find more than 2-3 world record holders at one competition, the only place where the stars constellate is the world championships. Otherwise, they train on their own, at different parts of the world, and know about each other’s achievements mainly through the Internet. The Carinthian Open had two current world record holders: Herbert Nitsch, who just made a new record in Constant Weight with fins one day before the start of the competition, and Dieter Baumann, who was the record holder of Constant Weight without fins with –33 meters (not for long, I can tell you that much in advance). Out of the 28 competitors, there were six women, amongst them, Melita Adanyi, the defending Queen of the lake from Croatia.

The competition was held in two disciplines: Static and Constant Weight. It was predictable that no one would come close to Herbert in Constant, but there were some guys (Germans mainly), who had good results in Static. Let’s see what happened in Static first.

Michael Peulecke (Denmark) "in the morgue"

Static competitions are held in swimming pools and the task seems to be simple: the freedivers have to put their heads into the water, and hold it there as long as their can. Sounds simple, but is hard to hold your breath for more than two minutes. During a Static competition, the pool is divided into different sections. For competition, for stand-by and for practice. The freedivers need practice before the competition to make their lungs used to the lack of oxygen. After the practice, they are usually towed to the competition section by the safety divers. They look like corpses on a plate at the morgue. The reason for that method is that if they stay in the water, being towed face up, then their heart rate remains slow, and that’s what they need in the Static.

Limits and blackouts

Christoph Kaiser needed medical help

During „warm-up” they practice with the help of safety freedivers, who can take them out of the water, if their mind wants to stay in the water longer than their body can. Their help was needed once in Millstatt, when the German Christoph Kaiser blacked out. They pulled him out of the water in seconds, the doctor ran to him with a bottle of oxygen, but no resuscitation was needed - he started to breath on his own. He got better in a few minutes, but of course, he was advised not to participate in the event after his blackout. During the competition, there was only one person who was believed to have had a blackout. It was the defending queen, Melita Adanyi, who had been famous for her carefulness.

Zeljko and Melita are not sleeping, they are preparing themselves mentally

It is not good to feel too good

She just lost her consciousness for a couple of seconds, and after that she was complaining to the safety divers, asking them why they had pulled her out of the water. She told me later that the problem was that she did not hear the safety diver counting the minutes. She wanted to come up at 4 minutes 30 sec, but she did not hear that the time has passed, even though her boyfriend was yelling „Melita, come up, Melita, come up”. She was taken out of the water at 4’45”. By that time she reached the point, where she started to feel very well. If a freediver is underwater and he/she starts to have a very pleasant feeling, that is a big warning: come out of the water, because you are about to lose consciousness. Melita was fine physically after a couple of minutes, but her blackout had a devastating effect on her and her partner’s mood. Melita and Zeljko Vedris, the Croatian freediving champion could not sleep that night and Zeljko did not feel well enough next day to go for his aimed personal best in the Constant Weight competition, so he did not compete. One of Herbert’s main rivals was out.

Every performance was digitally recorded

The best female in Static was the American Sharanne Wheeler, who was competing as a German, because she had been living in Germany for longer than a year, so she was allowed to take part in the German Championship, which was organized within the Carinthian Open. She stayed in the water for 4’55.

Amongst the guys, there were four who made it over six minutes. Three Germans and Herbert Nitsch. Herbert announced 6’00” for the competition, so he had to make 6’00”, if he did not want to get penalty points for coming up earlier. About two hours before his turn, was out in the lake, doing a world record attempt, so he just did not want to do anything extraordinary. I talked to him before the static:

Herbert Nitsch and Tom Sietas

- You just had a samba in the lake. How are you doing?
- I have a slight headache. I know, I am not going to win the static. I am just going to do 6 minutes. I know there are guys here who can do 7 mins. I hate the static anyway, it is a pain in the brain.
- But you need it for the overall classification…
- Well, it depends on how deep you can dive, compared to the others.

Herbert did 6’03”, while Oliver Haug reached 6’10” and Dominique Ventzke came up after 6’44”. And the winner of the event was the young German, Tom Sietas with 6’52”. Tom has a personal best of 8’06”. That is exactly how much the current world record is, held by Martin Stepanek. Tom, however, did that in training, so it is not a valid world record. (There is only one person, who has a better personal best: Herbert Nitsch did 8’27”, also in training.)

The static has its name for a reason. It can become tiring, even to watch. However, if you want to see how Tom Sietas’s 6’52” looked like, then click here for the full video of Tom’s performance.

LMC = Loss of Motor Control, Samba BO = Black Out