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Beyond Limits Herbert Nitsch was given the prestigious title of The Deepest Man on Earth, when he set the current world record for free-diving at an incredible depth of 214 metres in 2007.
 
As one of the spearheads of free-diving today, Herbert intends to push the limits even further by becoming the first breath-hold athlete to break the 300- metre barrier.
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Dec 09
2009

The final and some world record attempts

Posted by: Herbert Nitsch

Tagged in: Untagged 

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I haven't found much time to continue to update the last days of the world championship, I wanted to keep all my focus on the reason I am here for.

My dive in the constant weight final started with a very good feeling in my warmup. During my dive I had problems equalizing my left ear - it blocked totally as shallow as 20 meters. I had to press as hard as I could and it didn't get any better on the way down. I have not had a single equalization problem throughout my 4 weeks everyday training, but since my ability to equalize has improved so much, I had enough air left to force it deep enough. The ascent was surprisingly easy, as I had decreased my weight and used my new monofin. The result was a very successful gold medal dive.

At the closing ceremony, that same evening, I couldn't spend the time drinking as I was trying to find some freedviers to help me with my world record attempts, which I wanted to start the next morning. Unfortunately the main judge Nicolas Laporte arrived with a later flight doe to my internet problems here on this remote island. So we took the opportunity to perform a test dive for the next day. During my warmup more and more freedivers showed up as they awoke - some with a slight hangover in their face.

It was a good test which showed that we had to make some modifications for the variable weight attempt - something replacing a sled had to be built over night. I was suggesting to just mount a camera on a simple plastik tube and attache a weight to it. Doe to the counterweight not being strong enough a real sled was no option. The camera is needed according to the rules to verify the world record.

The camera teams offered to take this responsibility. They were a bit over-motivated, as they had puilt a huge sled from steal water-pipes. It worked great and I was really thankful to have it, but I felt it was a huge effort for single dive. The decent was a bit slow and my equalization valid earlier then expected. So I had to stretch my eardrums a little to reach the target of 142m. The ascend was quite relaxed and it resulted in world record nr.27

Today I wanted to take it easy on my ears and went for free immersion 112m. I was happy that my equalization was back to normal or more over - fantastic. That was WR nr. 28

Some more days of attempts left ....