Apnea's Angels: The New faces in Women Competitive Freediving
Posted By Nicolas Danan on 7 April 2009
No Charlie in the title, but Freediving instead as it is the drive and the passion that brings Francine Kreiss (France), Jana Strain (Canada) and Maccarena Benitez (Chile), to the competitive arena. There are a lot of new competitors every year in (both AIDA and CMAS competitions), but I wanted to narrow my search to three women that I believed to be the most representative of that new generation. I spent some time interviewing the three of them asking about how they got into the sport and what are their aspirations in this fast and ever changing freediving competitive realm.
Francine
The first interview started with Francine Kreiss the new athlete of the French female freediving team. I first heard of her before the world championship last year in Egypt as my good friend and French coach Gregory Piazzola, told me that a new female athlete was to step in, to the side of talented Julie Gautier and Solenn Launay (The Team ended up taking the 6th place in the 2008 World Championship). I had never met, or even talked to Francine before I called her so I was a tad anxious. When the southwest accented French voice answered the phone, I immediately felt the conviviality characterized by people from this region of France. "Salut Nico!" she said as if we had known each other for a while. As we are both passionate about the blue and freediving in particular we chatted for an hour that felt like 20 minutes. Born and raised close to the surfing French mecca of Hossegor, Francine is a water baby and has always been around the ocean. "At 10 years old I use to grab my snorkel and fins and silently sneak out of the house at 5 o'clock in the morning to go see the fish!" A surfer, she stumbled upon freediving using it as a tool to give her access to bigger waves. She got hooked on apnea right away "Je me suis laissee prendre au jeu" (I got caught in the game).
For personal reasons, she moved away from the west coast and ended up in the south of France close to Marseilles. Pursuing her breath hold solo adventure in the Mediterranean sea and hitting 15 meters, she figured out it was time to learn the rules if she wanted to go further. She tried to connect with some apnea club in the area but her busy schedule did not allow for this to work out. Eventually, mother synchronicity placed world record holder freediver Stephane Misfud in her office (Francine is a graphic designer) asking her to design a poster for an up and coming competition. She first asked him for some safety questions and soon was invited to train and compete with the Misfud crew.
At first "I did not want to compete" Francine confides that she is not a very competitive person. Stephane explained to her that it was not a competition against the others but rather with herself to find her potential and most of all it was a platform to meet other freedivers and have a good time. She went "Since we had good laughs ,I decided to continue". Then it was training with "La gueuse"(the sled) in Port Cros and the first constant weight dive to 30 meters "I wanted to see how deep I could go and look up, I love the feeling of having a column of water over my head I find it exhilarating". Francine admits that the 30 meter dive was easy and she did not experience pressure as of yet. It is later on in sept 2006 , when she trained with friend Marco Circosta and his best friend Umberto Pelizzari at an Apnea academy course in Spain, that "pressure appeared in my freediving world!"
She got hooked on spear fishing now and then. In 2007 she met up again with Marco and Umberto to train and hunt in the waters of Sharm El Sheik, Egypt. Something you have to know about Francine Kreiss is that she hates numbers, every time I tried to get at to where she was at and where she wanted to be as far as depth and times go, she refused to answer and humored her way out of it. When asked about what was her favorite discipline in freediving she answered "Spearfishing!" I meant dynamic, CWT ,static or else Francine!! "I am not a big fan of dynamic for me freediving is about freedom and wide open spaces so going back and forth in a four walled water environment is not much fun! Static on the other hand is a relaxing discipline, I like it as it is about making fun of the chronograph and time in general, all of which while taking a nice nap! My favorite discipline then has to be constant weight!"
I concluded the interview with Francine asking her about if she would consider pushing further as an athlete or else in the ever evolving world of freediving. "As I told you before I like to have fun with it but I am not one to constantly push the limit and go after numbers and performances, freediving is fun and provides me with an intense sense of freedom. I could see myself finding a way to share this experience and maybe teach why not? Sharing the fun is what it is all about. As for here and now my favorite thing is still to wake up early in the morning and sneak outside the house to go spear fishing or just diving to admire the underwater world (She pauses pensive) It gives me an extraordinary boost for the rest of my day." Francine is a great athlete but most of all a passionate being. She lives for those moments in the blue that a few of us have had the chance to experience, those characterized by absolute freedom.
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