Steinlager had agreed to support another live attempt at the 102-metre mark with no fins, and this was scheduled for March 2016. From the start, this attempt had a very different feel to 2014, although admittedly most of that was probably self-induced. In the 2014 interview immediately after the attempt, I had promised New Zealand that I would be back to try for the record again, and that when I finally reached the mark it would be dedicated to everyone who had supported me in the process. Or, to paraphrase: ‘Sure, I had a blowout this time, but future William will be round in a year or two to take care of the task!’ Easy to say then, of course, but when the new date was set ‘future William’ didn’t have quite the same level of confidence as his predecessor, and started to regret such a brazen promise. There were two edges to this sword: the one facing me was the intense pressure that my ‘personal guarantee’ to the nation had created; but the other was the one I could use to scythe a path forward — the fact that I had no alternative but to succeed. The script had been written, and I must play the part I had cast for myself at all costs. Just like in 2007, I would have to render success inevitable.
After mostly base training in November and December, the approach to depth began in January. In short order I reached 90 metres, which seemed to have become a kind of base camp in my no-fins diving. I could easily return to that point without much preparation, but progress beyond was not as easily come by. The first 95-metre dive was tough — no samba, but it wasn’t far off. Two days later, and 96 resulted in a surface blackout. It was now February. The pressure needle had gone through the red and was hard up against the barrier at the end of the dial. I took a week’s break from No Fins and did a few FIM dives, to 108, 114 and 117, but when I came back to CNF the next dive, to 97 metres, was still tight. Even though I felt comfortable in the ascent and did strong hook-breaths upon surfacing, I could tell that my oxygen level had dipped to just above a samba.
In the evenings, over group meals of pasta and homemade bread, we flung around ideas for how I might bridge the remaining gap to the world-record depth. The first idea was supplementing with creatine phosphate, an energy source mostly used by bodybuilders that doesn’t require oxygen to burn. After a ‘loading phase’ of three days taking creatine I tested another dive, with the identical result. The second idea was to try to induce a stronger dive reflex, just before the dive began, so that my body would shift to anaerobic energy production earlier in the dive and thus save the oxygen for my brain. Coldness is a strong stimulant of this reflex, so in the last 2 minutes of my countdown Shiv used a garden watering can to pour 3 litres of ice-cold water over my face. I could feel the drop in my heart rate as the reflex kicked in and my face was still numb in freefall at 40 metres, but again the 96-metre dive ended with a samba.
With the record attempt only weeks away, it was clear that I didn’t have a decent chance of success. To say nothing of success being inevitable. I needed to be diving as I had been ahead of the World Championships the previous year: with clean and confident dives to 100 metres. For now, there was nothing to be done but postpone the attempt until after Vertical Blue. When my agent called Steinlager to see if this was possible I was half-expecting them to pull the pin on the whole project, since they had already paid for billboards publicising March dates. Instead, as always the brand managers at Steinlager were understanding and supportive. ‘What matters is that you feel good about it,’ was their first response.
We set a new window in mid-July for the attempt, and I breathed a sigh of relief. With Vertical Blue on the horizon my training continued, but there was now less urgency to solve the problem of my drop in form. In March I switched to a program of deep hangs at 60 metres, stretching the dive times out to 6 minutes in search of complete peace and empty-mindedness at depth. After a week of this, I tried another 97-metre CNF dive to see whether developing better relaxation had made inroads on my problems. Yet again, I had a big samba on the surface. It was time to return to base camp, and build a new ascent towards my personal summit. I started with dreamy dives to 90 and 92 metres, then a slightly more difficult 94, but on surfacing from the next 95-metre attempt I breathed and then my head started shaking uncontrollably like a heavy-metal guitarist — another samba.
It was now mid-April. Vertical Blue was just around the corner, and I had still made no progress. To add injury to the insults, my shoulder had developed a strain that prevented me from using it in CNF or FIM, or even from maintaining a streamlined shape in CWT. I was confined to the shallows for another three precious training days while it healed. It looked as if Vertical Blue was going to be a complete write-off for me this year. Funnily enough, I wasn’t really that bothered.
When I met Sachiko, even my drive to dive deeper was moved to the back seat. This beautiful dark-haired Japanese girl, a surfer as much as a freediver, and also an actress and a film-maker, was an enigma to rival the deepest ocean depths. She was there to compete in her first freediving event, and every training day I arrived at the Blue Hole hoping to be met by her soft eyes and unfettered smile. By the time the event started I had grown to know her better, which only led to the discovery that there was so much more to know. My family and friends could see a transformation taking place. Suddenly my diving turned a page as well, just as Vertical Blue was getting going. I completed a dive to 116 metres in Free Immersion that was so easy I literally didn’t want it to end — I stopped 11 metres from the surface, shaking my head at my safety divers to indicate that I wasn’t quite ready to come up yet. This kind of foolery is of course completely unorthodox, and since a shake of the head is normally a sign of difficulty they moved in to assist me. Seeing this, I quickly waved them off before they could disqualify me with a touch, and finished the dive almost effortlessly. On the next competition day I announced 119 metres FIM and it was just as easy.
‘It’s the oxytocin in your system!’ a friend remarked, and this could well have been it. Called the ‘love hormone’, oxytocin is known to slow down the production of adrenaline and cortisol, the two strongest stress hormones that the body produces. It also inhibits the amygdala, our brain’s fear centre. I’ve never been afraid of the depths I aspire to, but fear of failure and the stress related to that is almost always present. It looked like oxytocin was taking care of all this: I was in love and diving carefree.
Buoyed by the ease of the 119, I announced 122 metres for 30 April. The idea of a world-record attempt in any discipline had been unthinkable just two weeks earlier, but now I was doped on hormones and riding a wave of confidence. My dive log notes that I was not at all nervous and had a perfect descent, with no difficulty equalising to a depth where the pressure would burst the tyres of a freight truck. There I hit my first speed bump, in the form of a tag that just wouldn’t stick to the patch on my leg (it was more likely that I was narced and trying to fix it to the wrong area). After a few wasted seconds I started to ascend with tag in hand, but that didn’t allow me to grip the line properly so I had another go at attaching it. Perhaps I should just have abandoned it at this point, but I hadn’t forgotten the previous FIM world-record attempt in 2012 when a runaway tag had cost me the prize. This time I was not going to let it get away from me.
Finally, the Velcro of the tag gripped the patch on my leg. The whole episode had come at a price, however: instead of the dreamy, blank-minded state I needed to be in for such a deep dive, I was flustered and already having contractions. ‘I’m extremely deep, I can’t avoid to get panicky here,’ I thought to myself, and dedicated the next few strokes to trying to enter back into a state of deep relaxation. But the damage had been done, and more contractions followed. ‘Hold on, and try and make it to your safeties,’ I told myself, expecting the worst. I was already starting to insert breaststroke kicks between arm pulls, a sure symptom of anxiety and a sign that the dive could end badly.
At last I heard the grouper call of the first safety diver meeting me at 35 metres, but I kept my eyes locked shut, focusing on restraining the urge to breathe, and pull
ing on the rope with as much control as I could manage. I was almost there, and when I glanced up I could see the square of empty water where I would be surfacing in the midst of the dangling feet of the spectators. It was so close, but seemed so unreachable. I pulled on the rope one more time and shook my head at the safety divers, expecting to feel their hands lifting me under my arms. None came. Ironically, the confusion I’d caused at the end of my 116-metre dive meant that they weren’t trusting my head signals! I’d cried wolf once, and now I’d have to fight off the real wolf myself. I pulled on the rope again, did a big breaststroke kick and one final pull, then broke through the surface to hold myself high out of the water. ‘Hook!’ yelled Shiv from the platform, then ‘Keep hooking! Keep hooking!’ as I started to tighten on the line, my head shaking. I was taking full lungfuls of air, 5 litres at a time, but starting to slide down the rope. My hand reached for my nose clip but slipped off my nose; I reached again and grasped it, pulling it clear, and now my mind was starting to clear too. I took one last hook-breath, looked French judge Cedric Palerme in the eye, and completed the protocol.
I had set a new world record, for the first time in five years. It wasn’t the no-fins record that I’d been pursuing, but it was a positive sign that that one, too, might soon be within my reach.
One day of Vertical Blue remained, and I felt that if I could avoid the problem with the tag at the bottom plate, then I should be able to manage a greater depth. I announced 124 metres, and spent some time practising the hand movement that would remove the tag from the plate and bring it to exactly the right spot on my leg. This time, there were no hiccups, and after being underwater for 4 minutes 30 seconds I surfaced and claimed my seventeenth world record.
My first instructor and mentor, Umberto Pelizzari, was guest of honour during Vertical Blue 2016. (Daan Verhoeven)
Part of what made these two records memorable was that they were my first successes in the presence of my family. I was able to share the celebration with them, Sachiko and the whole Vertical Blue crew, who had run the event seamlessly to allow me to relax and focus on my diving.
*
The date of the no-fins attempt, in July, was starting to loom on the horizon as I left for the Caribbean Cup in Roatan. My plan was to focus only on CNF there, and try to convert my recent run of form into that discipline so that I would be ready for a dive to 102 metres when I returned to the Bahamas. Once again I started out from base camp: 90, 92, 94 and 97. Each dive was as easy as the last, and the post-dive sambas that had been plaguing my training earlier in the season were no more than an unpleasant memory. On my thirty-sixth birthday I did my last training dive before the competition: at 99 metres, it was also my deepest dive outside of Dean’s Blue Hole.
There are six days of diving in the Caribbean Cup, of which I could feasibly use four if I was allowing 48 hours of rest between dives. My deepest target for the event was 100 metres — obviously, it would be foolish to break my record now with the attempt just around the corner. It made sense to build slowly and adjust to the competition scenario in the first couple of dives. This proved to be a wise move, since in the first dive, to 93 metres, there were several vexing issues — including an error in the countdown sequence and a tag that just didn’t want to come off the plate — but I came through it easily as I was diving to 6 metres less than my recent training. There was frustration in the second dive as well, as confusion in setting the line meant that I wasn’t moved into position until just 2 minutes from my Official Top. But with my duck-dive the aggravation dissolved into the gemlike Caribbean waters, and I had one of those miraculous ascents that seem abridged, as if the 98 metres I had announced had been condensed into only 30. In the final 10 metres I made an ‘okay’ sign to my safeties, stretched my arms towards the surface and slowly undulated my body in a relaxed dolphin movement, enjoying being gently lifted by positive buoyancy as if a giant hand of the ocean was bearing me skywards.
There was no doubting that I was ready to try 100 metres. The next day, I announced the depth for the first time outside of the Bahamas, and woke ready for the occasion on 30 May. The hectometre is, however, an obdurate temptress, and presented me with a host of adversaries to contend with. Chief among these was one of the largest dive boats on the island, which despite furious signalling from the competition organisers passed right by the official competition zone during my attempt. The timing was such that the wake from the boat hit the dive platform just as I was performing my turn and retrieving my tag. It was chaos on the bottom plate. As I grabbed the line above the plate, the first wave wrenched it and me upwards, dislodging the tag from my grasp. I went for another one, and this time managed to take it, but as I swam upwards the line was bucking up, down, left and right. I felt like I was trying to ascend alongside a skipping rope. Gradually the waves passed, but I was completely unsettled, had lost time in the turn and was worried about pulmonary oedema from the sudden jolt at maximum depth. At 75 metres I aborted the dive, and came up the rest of the way pulling on the rope. It was a great disappointment, but with a day still in hand there was no reason not to take the safer option and avoid the possibility of blackout.
So, on the last day of the event I would have one last chance to return to the hectometre officially for the first time since 2010 — and for the first time ever in a competition.
Even though this wasn’t a record attempt, on the morning of the dive I found myself a lot more nervous than I’d been before the recent Free Immersion world records. Even after so many years of freediving, I was still finding it hard to outwit the negative voices in my mind. In essence, the brain is an adaptive organ, constantly evolving itself depending on how we’re using it, and for this reason no mental technique will last indefinitely. Our brains become ‘immune’ to the technique; bored of it. It’s similar to how playing your favourite song a hundred times will, by the end, no longer generate the same kind of emotive response. Staying one step ahead in the struggle to control my mind was like an arms race: I had to continuously develop new strategies, mental tricks and mantras.
A lot of these strategies have to do with grounding the awareness in the present moment. It’s so easy for your conscious thought to float you downstream into a swamp of speculation about what might or might not happen in the future. I call this ‘scenario thinking’, and — especially when a world-record attempt is on the horizon — it can infect my every waking hour. Time and time again throughout the day, that toxic swamp burps up questions: What happens if I break the record? Or if I fail? What would I need to say to my sponsors, family, friends? Down the rabbit hole you go, into a whole universe of potential outcomes. Most of these will never come to pass, but the real pointlessness of the whole process lies in the fact that it adds to your background stress, in turn feeding the cycle of obsession with the future. The remedy is to bring your awareness gently back to the present moment, and what you are doing in it. Whether I’m making breakfast, putting on my wetsuit, or breathing on the surface before a dive, I allow that task to occupy my full attention. When I feel the urge to consider possible future worlds, I tell myself that there will be ample time after the dive to think about what happens next.
In Roatan I tried to condense this process into a simple phrase that I could use each time I felt myself slipping off the delicate balance beam that is my awareness of the present. The mantra I came up with there was simply ‘What is now is all,’ and this became abridged to ‘Now is all.’
‘Imagine if you black out on this dive, with all these people watching,’ my capricious mind would venture as I floated on my back in the competition zone, to which I would reply ‘Now is all,’ and remember that I was there, in that point of space and time, and nowhere else. ‘But wouldn’t it be cool if you smashed this dive to 100 the same way you did the last one to 98!’ another voice would offer, but the response would be identical and automatic: ‘Now is all.’ Any investment in those thoughts, positive or negative, would jeopardise the sense of detachment that all
owed me to perform at my very best.
The 100-metre dive was won on the strength of that preparation, and everything that followed was a formality. It was a cleaner and quicker dive (4 minutes precisely) than my hectometre record in 2010, and was easily my strongest ever no-fins performance in competition.
CHAPTER 12
1O2
A promise kept
Be quiet now, be still and let that deeper part of you, the part that has always been and always will be, before birth and after death, let that take you and bear you up.
William Trubridge, journal entry
WHEN I LEFT ROATAN to return to the Bahamas, part of me wished that I could have attempted the 102-metre world record right there and then. I was in the best form of my career, and the string of successes had made me feel invincible in the water. Instead, I would have to try to maintain that form for the next six weeks, and this prospect made me nervous. I felt like a skipper marooned in the harbour, desperately willing the favourable wind to hold out until I was ready to sail.
Dean, Shiv, Johnny and his girlfriend, Sofía Gómez, would be my safety divers and organisers for the attempt, with Tomas Ardavany returning as medic, accompanied by neurosurgeon Jani Valdivia. AIDA was sending its president and its secretary, Carla-Sue Hanson and Robert King, as the two official judges. And that was the full crew: there would be no in-water camera operators, as we had developed an underwater drone, capable of moving vertically along two suspended cables at the same speed as the freediver, with lights and cameras for filming the entire dive. These images, as well as above-surface footage on the platform and the beach, would be broadcast to New Zealand on TV One’s Breakfast program, with my parents as guests on the show in the Auckland studio. I tried to avoid hearing any statistics about how many thousands of viewers would be tuning in, or how the general public rated my chances of success this time around.
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