World Records Broken at Suunto Watch Vertical Blue
Friday - 14 December 2012
Two world records and 65 national records were broken at the Suunto Vertical Blue freediving event.
56 freedivers from 21 countries took part in the competition at Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas. Ashley Futral Chapman of the USA broke the Constant No-Fins women's world record with a dive to 67 metres in 3'15, while Russian freediver Alexey Molchanov achieved a world record dive of 126 metres in Constant Weight in a time of 3'46.
252 individual dives took place during the nine-day event, totalling 45 hours of diving. The athletes collected points for each dive, with the overall medal winners each receiving a Suunto watch as part of their prize. Alena Zabloudilova took gold for the women, and William Trubridge, Suunto ambassador and organiser of the event, finished top of the men's overall rankings.
"What makes Vertical Blue a special event is that it gives the athletes free reign to mine their aquatic potential. If you left your diamonds in the basement of a 40-story skyscraper that flooded up to its roof then these guys could freedive down the lift shaft and collect them for you," Trubridge said. "The deepest dives last in excess of four minutes, but that's not four minutes of holding your breath in your bathtub — it's four minutes of propelling yourself through the water column, while combatting pressures that would crush a soccer ball to the size of a tennis ball and which exert mind-numbing narcosis on neural circuitry. It's four-minutes that takes place in another dimension, where time is drawn out into an eternity — an eternity that lasts but a single breath."
Suunto provides the official depth gauge used at all AIDA World Record freedive attempts. Mika Holappa, Dive Business Unit Director at Suunto, said: "With so many of the world's top athletes taking part and so many fantastic World and National Records, Suunto Vertical Blue has been an amazing festival of freediving and we are proud to have been involved. William Trubridge should be congratulated not only for his inspiring dives but for organising such a successful event."
56 freedivers from 21 countries took part in the competition at Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas. Ashley Futral Chapman of the USA broke the Constant No-Fins women's world record with a dive to 67 metres in 3'15, while Russian freediver Alexey Molchanov achieved a world record dive of 126 metres in Constant Weight in a time of 3'46.
252 individual dives took place during the nine-day event, totalling 45 hours of diving. The athletes collected points for each dive, with the overall medal winners each receiving a Suunto watch as part of their prize. Alena Zabloudilova took gold for the women, and William Trubridge, Suunto ambassador and organiser of the event, finished top of the men's overall rankings.
"What makes Vertical Blue a special event is that it gives the athletes free reign to mine their aquatic potential. If you left your diamonds in the basement of a 40-story skyscraper that flooded up to its roof then these guys could freedive down the lift shaft and collect them for you," Trubridge said. "The deepest dives last in excess of four minutes, but that's not four minutes of holding your breath in your bathtub — it's four minutes of propelling yourself through the water column, while combatting pressures that would crush a soccer ball to the size of a tennis ball and which exert mind-numbing narcosis on neural circuitry. It's four-minutes that takes place in another dimension, where time is drawn out into an eternity — an eternity that lasts but a single breath."
Suunto provides the official depth gauge used at all AIDA World Record freedive attempts. Mika Holappa, Dive Business Unit Director at Suunto, said: "With so many of the world's top athletes taking part and so many fantastic World and National Records, Suunto Vertical Blue has been an amazing festival of freediving and we are proud to have been involved. William Trubridge should be congratulated not only for his inspiring dives but for organising such a successful event."
