One Breath

by Adam Skolnick

  Food is fuel. This is partly due to an early career sinus injury that damaged his sense of taste, but mostly because Will is a world-class athlete pushing his body to do things nobody has ever accomplished. His mostly vegetarian diet, complemented by whatever he can forage, as well as regular green protein shakes and home-baked power bars, keeps him thin. But he’s not scrawny. Will is all muscle, with six-pack abs, broad shoulders, and a slender waist.

  “Life is quiet,” Brittany said. “It’s an everyday routine in preparation for his dives. It’s all about his training.”

  Will trains eleven months a year. Each morning begins with yoga, including a series of apnea stretches to loosen the intercostal muscles and increase rib cage flexibility. He’ll stand on his head, do arm balances and down dog, then ripple and contract, relax and contort his diaphragm, stuffing it beneath his rib cage. That kind of thoracic flexibility allows a diver like Will to pack over 20 percent more air for Static breath holds or Dynamic swims, which he does in his own 25-meter lap pool to build lactic acid and CO2 tolerance. The thoracic stretches also help his lungs withstand atmospheric pressure at depth. Because his core is so flexible, he can remain loose and relaxed on a dive, which means his lung tissue doesn’t get bruised or battered. Will has had his share of blackouts, but he claims to have never been squeezed.

  Of course, adaptation to pressure comes naturally when living down the road from the best freediving terrain in the world. Nothing prepares one’s physiology for depth and pressure like reps, and Will dives deep four days a week, year round. He spends the island’s quiet nights analyzing his dive profiles on his computer. If his sink phase is a few seconds slow, as it was in the lead-up to Vertical Blue, he’ll add weight. In this case he had a 400-gram tungsten rod shipped just in time. If his ascent is too quick it usually means his oxygen efficiency will be off. Sometimes he consults freediving innovators like Eric Fattah for advice, and he’s always analyzing and contemplating, looking for an edge. But he works in enough sunset strolls, virgin beach patrols, and starry-night stare-downs to keep him calm and peaceful. He does live in paradise, after all, and each morning as he rolls over the rutted dirt track that leads to his favorite place on earth, he feels blessed.

  Dean’s Blue Hole is a mecca for a reason, and whenever Vertical Blue draws near, travel plans, car shares, and roommate arrangements ripple through Facebook. Spouses win permission for an extended trip away. Businesses shutter for a sabbatical; apartments and homes are house sat and sublet from Santiago to Warsaw, from Tokyo to Tel Aviv. Will is not the only diver who longs for the hole, after all, but he is the only man on earth who works there full time.

  In November 2014, athletes began to trickle into Long Island three weeks before the competition began. Among them were Mike Board; Carlos Coste; Iru Balic; Marianna Krupnitskaya; the ladies of Team Japan: Tomoka Fukuda, Hanako Hirose, and the Japanese national record holder Misuzu Okamoto; rising Slovenian star Samo Jeranko; and Alexey Molchanov.

  Alexey’s confidence was at an all-time high. His training in Croatia prior to arrival in the Bahamas had been spectacular, and he hoped to build on his dominant year by adding enough depth in Constant No Fins to make a run at Will’s world record. And if that didn’t work out, save his last dive for a potential Constant Weight record attempt at 130 meters. When asked if he would focus more on records or try to win, he said, “I won’t try to win. I will win.”

  The athletes came along with the usual entourage of judges, media, and safety divers. Carla Hanson was a judge again. Daan and Logan would be in the water with camera gear, and Marco Consentino was back as a safety. Johnny’s squeeze turned out to be minor and his lungs had cleared by morning. From then on his dives were shallow and his focus was on making Vertical Blue the safest it had ever been.

  Event medic Tom Ardavany, sixty-three, an ER and flight nurse who specialized in remote-area care and airlift rescue, made sure of that. Tom brought a robust medical kit with him, and it included a defibrillator. Thirteen years in medical air transport and nine years in a trauma center taught him one thing above all: “Play with your own toys,” he said. Kerry sent him the drills she and Ren ran in Roatan, and Johnny and his team ran through them several times a day, while Tom augmented them and led additional rescue seminars at Greenwich Lodge each night. Before the competition had begun, it was clear that Tom and Johnny helped Vertical Blue take a major leap forward in terms of health and safety.

  Although the official response from AIDA in the aftermath of Nick’s death was lacking, the General Assembly did vote through three rule changes in the hopes that nothing similar would ever happen again. The first one limited announcements to 3 meters beyond that diver’s personal best. That rule alone would have prevented Nick from attempting his 95-meter Free Immersion dive the Friday before he died, because his deepest successful Free Immersion dive on record was 81 meters. The second rule banned recommencing descent, and the third and final rule authorized event doctors, medics, or judges to suspend divers who’ve been squeezed. Although Deja Blue had given its event doctors that jurisdiction for years, AIDA had not. That’s why Walid was so upset to be suspended from the Caribbean Cup in Roatan. Doctors had never had that kind of power before, but Nick’s death was seen as a tipping point. AIDA had to change.

  Although the rules passed in a summer landslide, they wouldn’t take effect until January 2015. Will saw no reason to wait and implemented them at his event anyway. He also added an oxygen saturation test designed to detect lung squeezes. Oxygen saturation is the percentage of oxygen carried by red blood cells in the bloodstream. A level of 95 to 100 is normal for adults, and if an athlete scores below 95 when taking the test on the beach within thirty minutes after surfacing, it could indicate a lung squeeze. In that case they would be examined by Tom and given another saturation test that same evening. If the symptom or the reading persisted, the athlete would be suspended for a period of time. It was a well-intentioned plan that proved controversial, as more than one athlete scored above 95, then spit blood all afternoon. Because they’d passed, and kept their injuries to themselves, however, they were free to dive the very next day.

  Mike Board touched off the controversy when he suffered a blackout on the second day of competition. He had been going for a personal best and a new UK national record of 103 meters, but it was a stormy morning. The wind was blowing and the water was a touch colder than normal. With no sun, Mike warmed up in the water by hanging onto a line at 20 meters, then waited on the chilly platform for his turn in the competition zone. Shivering and depleted, he still went for it. The dive never felt right and when he met the safety divers at 30 meters, he asked for help. As they swam him to the surface he blacked out in about 5 meters of water.

  As he breached the surface, saliva bubbled from his lips as his girlfriend, New Zealand record holder and internationally known yoga instructor Kate Middleton (no, not that one), watched in horror. Mike came around quickly and breathed oxygen as Tom checked him out. He would go on to take the oxygen saturation test and pass, but he knew he was squeezed. He felt moisture in his chest and spit some blood. It was mild, but it was there, and given what he’d witnessed the year before, he felt it appropriate to tell Tom and get checked out again that evening.

  Tom wouldn’t discuss Mike’s case, but by then, Mike said he was fine and that Tom told him he was symptom free. Still, the judges banned Mike for three days, which they claim was on Tom’s recommendation. Mike appealed. “Why did you give me three days instead of two, five, or ten?” he asked. The judges had no answer, but held firm. Mike was right that the ruling was arbitrary. There was no way to know how mild or severe the damage was to his alveoli. Dr. Elsayegh said it can take one to four weeks for most similar injuries to heal, so what good would three days do? Freediving was still in the wilderness, and there was no road map.

  Meanwhile, Mike’s housemate, Yaron Hoory, the Israeli national record holder, blacked out on day one going for a 66-meter Constant No Fins dive. He faile
d the oxygen saturation test on the beach, but passed that night when Tom examined him, and was cleared to dive. Like Mike, he’d spit blood, but never confessed. He took a day off to rest, but could have been in the water on day two if he’d wanted. “I am mature enough to decide for myself when I can or can’t dive,” he said. “If I think being honest is gonna get me banned for the rest of the competition, I’m gonna swallow my blood.”

  It got weirder later in the competition when UK freedive blogger and physician Chris Cranshaw, who trained with Mike in Indonesia before Vertical Blue, came up after a no fins dive to 68 meters and earned a white card. While waiting for his turn to breathe oxygen on the beach, he offered a foghorn cough and spit blood. He kept coughing and spitting, sometimes specks, and sometimes teaspoons. He passed the oxygen saturation test on the first try.

  “It’s obvious, we need a better way to diagnose a squeeze,” Mike said.

  “Let’s not kid ourselves,” Chris added. “There is no objective measure. I’ve just passed the objective measure.” He felt terrible for Mike when he was suspended without adequate explanation, and believed decisions like that might encourage other divers to hide their squeezes. “What you want to do is to encourage openness with athletes, so they are honest with the doctor or medic and honest with themselves. The best way to keep athletes safe is to encourage them to keep themselves safe.”

  At Vertical Blue 2013, before Nick died, the chatter was about how the general public, and more specifically the media, didn’t understand how safe the sport really was. Nosebleeds and blackouts scared exactly no one, and few were fazed by lung squeezes. If questioned, athletes would deny the sport’s inherent risk. Now Chris hoped those same athletes would hold themselves back, but would they?

  In the face of change, athletes had begun to admit that risk is part of the draw. A large part, the same as with high-altitude mountain climbing, big-wave surfing, or base jumping. It’s the exploration of dangerous terrain and the pursuit of an experience few will ever know—that Zen hit during freefall, which is the physiological equivalent of deep meditation—combined with an uncertain outcome that heightens the rush. These men and women live to dive deep.

  “You could tell me every 100-meter dive damages your lungs, and that’s not gonna stop me from doing it,” said Mike, who would nail his 103-meter dive on his second attempt. “You can’t legislate risk out of the sport.”

  Samo Jeranko put it plainly after hammering an elegant dive to 107 meters with his monofin. “At the surface you have to accept that you might die,” he said. “You must have no fear.”

  His words were a harbinger of a coming tragedy that would shock freedivers everywhere and make international news. On August 2, 2015, Natalia Molchanova would disappear while freediving off the coast of Formentera, an island in Spain. She’d been teaching a small group of students, who also happened to be friends. They were beginners, and she trailed them on instructional dives to 5, 10, and 15 meters. Between those dives she demonstrated proper technique off the line, and dived to about 15 meters each time, while her friends watched. After about an hour she plunged off the line again, without fins, this time for pleasure, on a dive thought to be between 35 and 65 meters. Untethered, she was swept away in one of the fierce underwater currents the area is known for, and surfaced 60 meters away. Her friends saw her briefly, hopped in their boat, and motored toward her, but she slipped below before they could reach her. She most likely suffered a surface blackout, and disappeared forever. Search efforts lasted nearly a week but were fruitless. “It seems she’ll stay in the sea,” Alexey said, heartbroken, three days after her disappearance. “I think she would like that.”

  There is no doubt that Natalia went out doing what she loved most, and from a wide angle, her story—the one about a forty-year-old divorced, single mother, who took up a new sport and practiced it passionately and brilliantly—is inspirational. Over the course of her career she accumulated forty-one world records, twenty-three world titles and became the most decorated athlete in the sport’s history by far. But her death also revealed, yet again, just how thin the margin for error is in freediving, even for the very best.

  —

  On December 2, Will ascended deliberately, working his perfect breaststroke, and met Johnny at 35 meters. “He looked strong,” said Johnny. “He looked determined.” But at the 10-meter mark he peeked toward the surface, and that’s when Johnny knew he was in trouble. Though his dive time was on the money—the dive would take only 3:58—Will had reached his physiological limit too soon that day, and began pulling the line. Johnny grabbed him and hustled him to the surface. His lips were as blue as the water, and he quickly lost motor control and blacked out.

  Brittany was his coach, but when Will surfaced in Johnny’s arms there was nothing for her to do but watch and hope. “When he has a blackout, I feel it,” she said, “I get emotionally exhausted.” This time he was gone for only a few seconds, and when he came to, she could relax as he received a warm round of applause.

  Will gracefully met his obligations. He did his interviews with New Zealand television, and Steinlager supported him all the way, unveiling a new tag line on Twitter: When you push boundaries, success isn’t guaranteed, but our support is. That message was echoed by the Kiwi public, who before and after the event flooded the Steinlager website with encouraging messages. Nervous the night before, Will read several, which made his failure even more poignant.

  He left the beach despondent. When asked about his next move, he said, “Well, I have two more dives left. I guess I’ll try to get on the podium.” To do that he’d have to nail dives in Constant Weight and Free Immersion, disciplines he hadn’t been working on much in the lead-up to Vertical Blue. Most expected him to post a modest announcement, all but concede the comp to Alexey, and try to edge Samo for silver. Instead, Will announced a 120-meter dive in Free Immersion, just one meter off his world record.

  All over the world, freedivers chimed in on Will’s announcement. Many called it irresponsible, considering he’d had two blackouts in his first three attempts. Some called for rules to prevent an athlete from diving the day after a blackout. Of course, that one had been proposed along with the new rules passed earlier that summer, and it was voted down. Alexey defended Will’s choice. “He isn’t squeezed, and his announcement is within the rules,” he said. “It’s a sport, and in our sport we push limits.” Alexey was right. Will’s announcement was legal. It was also ballsy. If he missed, he’d be out of the medal hunt in his own playground.

  Judging by the online commentary, Will’s decision was also a little dangerous. Embedded in the posts and tweets flying around the freediving social media sphere was underlying concern that tragedy might strike again at Dean’s Blue Hole. Brittany has lived with that worry for years.

  “There’s times when nobody is on the island and it’s just me holding the line and those thoughts cross your mind,” she said. “What if he doesn’t come up? What am I going to do? It’s a deep, low-grade anxiety that I live with, and I don’t think about it because it’s not healthy and it’s not good for him. Every once in a while I feel sorry for myself. But you have one life and you have to realize your potential in whatever field you choose, and this is what he loves to do.” (She and Will would separate within a year.)

  The wind had died down and the sun was shining when Will drove up to the beach, over an hour before his Free Immersion dive. He looked relaxed and fresh. He waved to a neighbor who had come out to watch, took photos with athletes, and watched a kiteboarder carve the bay beyond the hole, then sat beside Alexey in the shade. With the hoopla of the record attempt behind him, he looked more relieved than anxious. He had nothing to lose.

  All athletes work hard to build and repeat their habits, and Will’s breathe up didn’t change. Free Immersion is the slowest discipline, so his descent of .9 meters per second wasn’t alarming on its own, but with two recent blackouts there was no telling if he had the reserves to withstand another long dive.
He touched down in 2:16 and knew he needed to pick up the pace. He did just that, pulling and gliding, pulling and gliding, first the right hand, then the left. His pace was steady but the contractions began punching him in the gut when he hit 60 meters. He’d been in the water for 3:20, and was moving at 1 meter per second. Then, as if an internal alarm sounded, he began pulling and gliding faster and faster. He covered the next 30 meters in twenty seconds, and was back on pace, gliding the last 10 meters toward the surface. When he was 3 meters away he nodded to himself, the way he did when he knew he had it, though he wobbled at the surface. Luckily, Brittany was there to lead him home.

  “Goggles, William!” she belted. He inched them onto his brow, flinching slightly. “Nose clip! Make the sign! Do it! Now breathe!” Will did as his wife demanded, his surface protocol was clean, and when the white card came, he was back in the game.

  After clean dives by Mike and Samo, Alexey would have his say. He’d announced 95 meters in Constant No Fins. He’d been so close in his last attempt to 97 meters, he figured taking a small step back would give him the space he needed to make the dive. If he made it, the gold medal was his for sure, as he’d have won two of the three disciplines outright, including Will’s best. Nevertheless, it was a puzzling choice. He didn’t need to win the no fins battle. He could have announced 92 meters or 93 and made up what he’d lose in points by pushing out his Constant Weight depth on his final dive. Instead of trying to win the competition with his best weapon, he’d made an all-or-nothing choice on no fins. Then again, he’d focused on Constant No Fins all year long, and had the best year so far of any diver in the water. Elite athletes trust their preparation, so that’s what Alexey did.

  “I expected him to make it,” said Will, who was in the water to watch.

  Alexey also analyzes the forensics of every failure, and knew he needed to be fifteen seconds faster than he had been on the last dive. He was, but the dive was miserable. He felt discomfort almost the entire way, yet he fought through it to stay on pace. As he approached the surface, however, something was off. He’d abandoned the breaststroke and started to dolphin kick. Without fins that doesn’t help much, and it looked and felt like a desperate choice from an athlete on the verge. He managed to reach the surface and grabbed the rope high but his grip slipped, and he flopped backward, shaking. He’d lost motor control but he’d managed to keep his airway above the water, and the safety divers hadn’t touched him yet. He still had a chance as long as his airway didn’t slip below the surface.