One Breath

by Adam Skolnick

  After a dive is complete, an athlete or athletes can file a protest, which the judges will hear later that afternoon or evening. Those hoping to get a red card reversed usually file them, but at world championship events, things get heated, and athletes do protest one another.

  “There are rules but there is also common sense and fair play,” Alexey said about the incident. “I did the dive and I wasn’t shaking, there was no samba, and I wasn’t blacking out. I was clean. I told them if they did some minor thing wrong in the rules and the judges gave them a white card, I would never protest. I told them my opinion and they didn’t do it. So there was a little struggle after the dive, but no hard feelings. I was happy they didn’t [go forward with the protest] and that’s it, but it was a sensitive situation. It was a world record and they were trying to take it away from me.”

  Then again, Alexey was now in the business of trying to take something away from Will. Despite his failed first attempt, Alexey knew he had 96 meters in him, and if he nailed it the second time, he believed he still had a chance at Will’s no fins record.

  Alexey’s decision to gun for Will’s record appeared to be timed perfectly, because Will had been having trouble with his own pet discipline. In the run-up to the Caribbean Cup, Will’s training had not been going well. The world record holder, and only diver to reach 100 meters without fins, was struggling with dives beneath 90 meters. It was alarming because swimming without fins had been Will’s favorite thing to do ever since he was a boy living on a sailboat.

  Will Trubridge was born in North England, but from the time he was two, he, his brother, and his parents cruised the high seas and worked and played in whichever port they docked. Australia, Tortola, Tahiti—wherever they landed, Will and Sam spent most of their time in the water diving for shells. When they moved to the family’s native New Zealand after Will turned eight, they carried on living aboard the boat for five more years, spending summers in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. The brothers occasionally got competitive underwater, and Will estimated that he could dive to 15 meters on one breath before he was ten years old.

  In 2002, when Will was twenty-two, he abandoned his promising career as a genetic engineer in Auckland—the sterility of lab life bored him—and moved to London to work and travel abroad. One evening, his roommate returned from a trip to Ko Tao, Thailand, and told him about the freedivers he saw there. Will was curious, so he researched the sport online, and what he found intrigued him enough to practice dry breath holds on his bed and do some breath-hold swimming in a local pool, but he didn’t manage to impress himself. So he packed his bag and hit the road.

  Will spent most of the London winter of 2003 in the Honduran Bay Islands, choosing nearby Utila over Roatan because it was more backpacker friendly. He spent every day in the water, morning and afternoon, often eclipsing forty dives in a day. He seldom used fins because he rarely used them growing up. The breaststroke was his default mechanism and he trusted it. He hitched rides to the offshore dive sites with scuba shops, so he could freedive through soft coral canyons and along walls draped in hard corals that fed schools of Technicolor tropical fish. He dove alone. Nobody watched his back, which was extremely dangerous, but he didn’t know any better at the time. “I remember coming up from one dive and feeling this buzz throughout my body and thinking, that was cool. Let’s do it again.” In reality that was his body sending signals that he should quit for the day or he might black out. Like Nick in those Florida springs, Will got lucky.

  He didn’t dive with a depth gauge either, until his last day in the islands. As he swam toward the deeper, darker blue that sunlight couldn’t penetrate, he passed a handful of scuba divers who regarded him with a mixture of curiosity, alarm, and awe. It got darker and darker and soon he couldn’t equalize any further, so he turned and swam for the surface. He took a deep breath and another then looked at the gauge. He’d been to 46 meters without fins, and he’d never been coached. Like Nick Mevoli, Will Trubridge was a natural.

  He finally did take a freediving course with the legendary Umberto Pelizzari later that year in Sardinia, and he became one of Pelizzari’s star pupils. Never a competitive athlete growing up, always better at chess than sport, Will was on the road to becoming the world’s best, and what set him apart was his ability to dive without fins, widely considered the most physically demanding discipline. After the course he stayed on in Sardinia, where he would train by paddling out to depth in a canoe and dropping a mooring in 55 meters of water, but it was never easy. He dodged speedboats and jellyfish constantly and contended with weather and wind swell. Rents were high in Sardinia, and it was difficult to make ends meet at first, but he soon secured a deal to translate Pelizzari’s Manual of Freediving into English, which kept the coffers full.

  In 2004, the same year Pelizzari trained him to be a freedive instructor, Will entered his first competition and hit 55 meters without fins. He surfaced with a mask full of blood. Though he managed a white card, Will had suffered a bad sinus squeeze (when pressure injures tissue in the sinus). It would be his last dive for five months.

  As his sinus healed, he spent the ensuing weeks doing apnea walks and other dry exercises to stay fit. It was a frustrating time because he knew the Constant No Fins world record was just 63 meters. He could see it, floating out there, well within reach, if only his body would cooperate. The following year, fully healed, he entered a competition in Sicily and hit 65 meters without fins, but by then the world record needle had moved.

  Will had made progress, but he also knew that if he were to ever break a world record, he needed to live somewhere with ample and accessible depth and with reliable conditions year round. In late 2005 he heard whispers about Dean’s Blue Hole and set out to find it. Less than eighteen months later, when he dove to 81 meters without fins on April 9, 2007, in Dean’s Blue Hole, Will would have his first world record.

  Constant No Fins had always been Will’s stake in the ground, and if he’d lost that gift, what would become of the rest of his career? Will was no upstart. He was thirty-four, closer to the end of his athletic prime than the beginning, and Alexey, twenty-seven, would only get stronger. But one thing helped Will rest easier as the competition wore on. He’d figured out what was holding him back.

  Freedivers can be thrown off by the slightest mechanical error. Bad habits can creep up undetected and become a part of the diver’s natural preparation until they are identified and eliminated. Like a pure shooter in basketball rediscovering his three-point stroke, Will considered his preparation minute by minute and remembered that of late he was seeing small stars in his field of vision as he packed air into his lungs, and was no longer feeling an urge to breathe until well after descending to 50 meters. Those two factors led him to believe he was overbreathing during the final minutes before the dive. The breathe up before a dive can be a delicate thing. On the one hand he needed to lower his heart rate and CO2 level, which helps delay the urge to breathe and can stimulate the Bohr effect, when hemoglobin in the blood naturally binds to more oxygen, enabling muscles to use that oxygen more efficiently on the dive. But if CO2 levels are too low, the athlete won’t maximize the dive reflex or Bohr effect, and both are critical to a diver’s ability to push his physiological limit.

  On day four of the competition, during his next Constant No Fins attempt to 90 meters, Will had no such worries. He sliced through the water with precision and elegance, and came up clean and on time at 3:35, showing no signs of mental fog at the surface. The dive looked easy for him, and Kimmo flashed a white card. Will had lengthened his lead in a competition that hadn’t yet lived up to its billing, because Alexey was still fixated on no fins, and it was fair to wonder if this would be much of a competition at all. It didn’t take long to get an answer.

  Alexey was back in the zone as athletes and fans treaded water and peered below, Will among them. Watching his rival dive, Will hoped to take stock of him, evaluate his preparation, and see how much he had left in the tank in case the w
hite card came and Alexey was that much closer to his record. Alexey was oblivious. Suspended upright, his eyes narrowed on the line, just centimeters from his face. When his top time came, he continued to pack air for twenty seconds before folding forward and swimming toward his elusive goal. He’d been down for nearly three minutes when Will took a breath and swam to 25 meters in his long bi-fins, hoping to catch a glimpse of Alexey’s form on his way up. They rose together. This time Alexey was seven seconds faster and oriented toward the judges, calm and under control, the tag peeking out from beneath his golden hood.

  “Vichy,” Marina said, calmly. “Vichy.” Marina beamed with pride, and Alexey almost smiled as he went through the protocol without a glitch.

  “A new national record!” The announcer boomed from the platform.

  “Beautiful dive, Alexey,” one of the safety divers called out.

  “That was tough,” Alexey said with a smile. “I’m getting tired of that. Maybe I try to win now?” By day’s end, Will was in the lead, but the pressure behind him was mounting.

  With Alexey setting his sights on Caribbean Cup gold, and Will diving well, there was a good vibe glowing around West Bay, but Walid wasn’t thrilled. Kerry had banned him from the remainder of the competition. “I understand that they are being careful, but physically there’s nothing wrong with me,” he insisted. Walid never considered a ban a possibility after his frightening experience at 106 meters. He took a day off to recuperate plus the official off day, before announcing a 108-meter Free Immersion dive, which was placed on the schedule pending Kerry’s clearance.

  What makes it so difficult to detect a lung squeeze is that once edema leaves the lungs, which can happen in hours, there is no way to determine if there is indeed an injury. There are no nerves in the lung, so pain isn’t a major factor, and only large tears show up on an ultrasound. Three days after his squeeze, Walid had no lingering symptoms, but Kerry wasn’t going to clear him. Not after what happened to Nick. She didn’t base her decision on science. There wasn’t a body of knowledge about lung squeezes and their recovery to work with. Kerry just knew something had to be different. Walid tried to change her mind. “This happens, but my body adapts and it’s okay,” he said.

  “No,” Kerry replied, “it’s not okay, and if this happens repetitively, that’s exactly what happened to Nick.” Walid fumed. He didn’t like that she made a decision based on Nick rather than his own medical condition, and was furious that Esteban and Kimmo backed her even though there was no AIDA rule in place allowing a doctor to bench an athlete. She hoped he’d take at least a couple of weeks off to heal, but could only control him for the rest of the comp.

  On the second to last day of the competition, Will and Alexey traded blows. Alexey began by besting Will in Free Immersion with an easy dive to 112 meters. For the moment he led in two of the three disciplines, with his best discipline, Constant Weight, still to come. Then Will shocked everyone with an announced Constant No Fins dive to 97 meters.

  “He hasn’t been doing well in training,” one safety diver whispered. “He doesn’t have it,” said another, but everyone wanted to watch him try, because watching Will swim without fins is like watching Usain Bolt run or LeBron James fly. The way his long, slender arms and legs extend and fold into a rhythmic flow of precise right angles, gathering water with their momentum and thrusting him down with superhuman force and effortless glide, is perfection in motion.

  At 80 meters, with a dive time of 1:30, he faded from the sonar feed, blipping back during his ascent at 75 meters. He’d been underwater for 2:45. The rest of the ascent went smoothly and on time, and he surfaced at 3:51, grabbing the line and holding himself high above the surface with both hands. Good thing, because as he used his right hand to remove his goggles, he began to slip. Fluid goggles often stick tight to the eye socket and he struggled to remove his, while the shock of his first hook breath stopped him cold. He’d made the okay sign, but struggled to find the air and strength to say the words as he fumbled the tag into the sea.

  His lips were blue, he’d stopped breathing, and was about to black out, but Carla was there to catch him. “Breathe!” She shouted. “Keep breathing!” Suddenly the light switched back on, and he said the words, “I’m okay.” Then he shook his head and sighed, clearing the cobwebs, his tunnel vision expanding to take in the scene of fifty odd divers and fans watching a master at work. Yes, he’d fumbled the tag, but the judges had seen it and they offered a white card. Will pumped his fist. Alexey had served notice, and Will reminded him he was still the no fins king. He was back in the lead with one dive to go.

  The scoring system controversy would have no effect on the men’s division. Going into the final day, Will had the top performance in Constant No Fins with 97 meters and Constant Weight with 111 meters, and was just a meter behind Alexey in Free Immersion. Alexey led that category with 112 meters, and had scored a 96-meter no fins dive. That evening they each crunched numbers to determine a depth and discipline that would give them the crown, and both opted for their monofin. Will announced 116 meters, but this was Alexey’s go-to discipline, and he announced a powerhouse dive of 123 meters, just 5 meters off his record.

  It was fitting that on the last day of the Caribbean Cup, after the contentious women’s race had been settled, Alexey and Will, the sport’s two deepest men, would deliver the final dives. The crowd had swelled in the last two days. Tourists rented kayaks to paddle out and watch, while others hopped on the athlete transport panga. Close to sixty people were either bunched on the bow of the dry boat or in the water surrounding the competition zone, under an incandescent tropical sun.

  At 12:27 p.m. on May 31, Will duck dove and began dolphin kicking toward depth, touching down just under two minutes later. The announcer clocked him as he ascended, and at 3:10, he came back into sight, 20 meters below. He pierced the surface, completed the protocol on time, and afterward hung diagonally off the line with a playful grin. The crowd erupted in cheers. His competition was done. Six white cards in six dives and a gold medal within reach. But was it a gold medal performance? Alexey would have something to say about that.

  “Bring in the Russian,” Ren shouted as anticipation rippled through the gallery and the bottom plate was moved to 123 meters. Alexey had been pushing the limit in Constant No Fins all tournament long, but this would be his first Constant Weight dive and his first dive of any kind above 112 meters. While the pressure difference between the low 110s and 120s doesn’t amount to much, nitrogen narcosis can become a real problem. With every added second of dive time, and every additional meter of depth, more nitrogen builds in the bloodstream, which clouds the brain. Nitrogen narcosis didn’t concern Alexey, though, especially when wearing a monofin. He’d been swimming with one since he was sixteen years old.

  Alexey was born in Volgograd, Russia, a sprawling city on the Volga River, in the Southern plains, once known as Stalingrad. His mother, Natalia Molchanova, taught him to swim when he was three, and by the time he was five years old he’d set the national age group record in the 800-meter backstroke. Alexey was soon his age-group champion in freestyle and butterfly, as well. Alexey was a swim prodigy, and in Russia, swim prodigies are sent to sports schools where Olympic champions are groomed.

  His school was in St. Petersburg, where he switched to fin swimming. Popular in Russia, China, and Brazil and well known throughout Europe, fin swimmers wear monofins and special snorkels, which allow them to skim just beneath the surface, dolphin kicking all the way. It’s strange yet elegant and much faster than traditional swimming. For instance, the 50-meter fin swimming world record of 15.06 seconds, set by Russian Pavel Kabanov in July 2014, is nearly six seconds faster than the freestyle 50-meter world record of 20.91 set by Cesar Cielo in Brazil in 2009. William Paul Baldwin of Greece owns the 100-meter fin swimming mark with a time of 34.18 seconds, which is more than 15 seconds faster than Michael Phelps’s world record in the 100-meter butterfly.

  Alexey made the switch to reca
pture the joy of swimming, which had begun to wane for him just a bit. It wasn’t a calculated move to jump-start a future freedive career, but it worked out that way. As a seventeen-year-old high school graduate, Alexey moved to Moscow, where his mother had begun freediving in earnest. She became his coach once again, and when she went to Cyprus to compete in the 2004 AIDA World Championship, Alexey tagged along. He competed for the first time in 2005, when he was just eighteen years old, and his 82-meter dive in Constant Weight made him the seventh best in the world.

  Nine years later, on May 31, 2014, he was trying to defeat the very best and win an overall title against Will Trubridge for the first time. He’d have to hammer his 123-meter dive to do it, something he projected would take 3:45. The sonar followed him to 90 meters and cut out. He’d been underwater for 1:30, and the gallery was held in suspense as the announcer squinted toward the feed, looking for Alexey’s fuzzy, digital trail. At 80 meters he was back on line and on the way home; 2:40 had passed. Thirty seconds later he was at 50 meters and the safety divers were on their way down to meet him.

  Alexey picked up his pace as the seconds ticked off and he came into view just after hitting 20 meters at 3:35. Five seconds later he was at 10 meters. He took his time from there, gliding the rest of the way and breaking the surface at 3:53. “Vichy,” Marina said, “vichy.” Just one look and she knew he had it.

  He grabbed the line with one hand and removed his yellow nose clip with the other, flashed the okay sign and said, “I’m okay,” with a breathy whisper. He removed the tag from his hood, and this time the judges didn’t need to huddle to make a decision. Kimmo flashed a white card. Alexey had won.

  That night, the athletes gathered one more time on the beautiful beach fronting the boutique, West Bay Resort. A stage was erected, a dance floor laid out, and a DJ was on the decks, ready to spin beats for the eager divers who finally permitted themselves a beer, a rum, and another beer after that. Esteban began the awards ceremony speaking English, but the Latin Quarter wasn’t having it. “Espanol!” they demanded gleefully, “Espanol!” They were in Honduras, after all.