He sticks out.įans and fellow divers hang on the floating PVC pipe that delineates mere civilian waters from the “competition zone” above the blue hole. On more than one occasion, I overhear other divers describe his ass as “meaty.” He is a unit. There is no ideal body shape in freediving but many of the divers at Vertical Blue are as long and lithe as distance runners. He is just short of six feet tall, bald, and looks as squat as a Soviet boxer. Though he may be better known for the capabilities of his lungs and his brain, his body is different from many other bodies in freediving, as well. His golden wet suit clings tightly to his head and his body. He is maskless but he has just affixed his nose clip. It is the deepest any diver has ever attempted in the history of the competition.Īlexey bobs vertically in the water. This is the deepest dive that anyone will attempt in the nine days of Vertical Blue. ![]() In Constant Weight, competitors can dive with the assistance of a small amount of weight and the fin, or fins, on their feet. It is day four of Vertical Blue, and Alexey is attempting to break one of his own world records-in a discipline called Constant Weight-with a dive of 131 metres (or about 43 stories). Today, people are watching the action from those rocks, and from the surface of the water, and from well beneath, down in the hole. And no one alive goes down like Alexey Molchanov.ĭean's Blue Hole sits within a natural amphitheatre of scrub and rock, about 50 feet off of a secluded beach. That's one way to think of what he's doing: Free Solo but for drowning. It is like watching the world's best rock climber scale a sheer face with ease, only the inverse. Seemingly anyone else attempting what he does would die. Watching the 34-year-old Russian Alexey Molchanov dive can be dangerously disorienting. ![]() How deep can we go as a species? Today, there is one diver who goes the deepest, who blends the physical and metaphysical like no one else in the sport. There is, though, also the allure of records. This is the allure of the practice of freediving. When we tempt fate in this way, our bodies and minds surprise us. It is not a stretch to suggest that when we humans deliberately cut off our access to oxygen, and then exert ourselves in athletic performance, we are inviting disaster, or at least tempting fate. Safety protocols are always improving, but the spectre lingers. At this same competition in the Bahamas eight years ago, a young American from Brooklyn who was quickly ascending the ranks of the world's elite divers (perhaps too quickly, some say) died in this very cove, above this very blue hole. At the surface, after reacquainting with the air, there can be loss of motor skills, uncontrollable shaking, blackouts, blood. There are no shortcuts in freediving no cheat codes to water pressure, buoyancy, and gravity. ![]() There is a temptation to go deeper before one is ready, which means that even the world's best tend to bite off only incremental gains in depth. Pressure, which builds as one goes deeper, can rupture the soft tissues of the ears, throat, and lungs if it's not properly managed. Blackouts are frequent, especially at shallow depths, even for the most skilled divers. Like other activities in which the sublime is sought, danger is an animating feature. “There is a part of freediving,” the world's best freediver, Alexey Molchanov, says, “that can be very useful for everyone.” There are, it turns out, benefits to better breathing, to masterful body control, and to pursuing the state of mindfulness that is required to plunge to unfathomable depths without freaking the fuck out and accidentally killing yourself. To other sports, to work, to relationships with colleagues and friends and family. The seemingly unique techniques of freediving, then, translate beyond the bounds of freediving.
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