45 athletes from all over the world are now competing at the 9th edition of the CMAS Apnea Indoor World Championship. Held in Lignano Sabbiadoro in Italy until June 12th, the championship will see performances in the 6 CMAS pool disciplines, namely:
- Dynamic Apnea with monofin (DYN)
- Dynamic Apnea with bi-fins (DYN BF)
- Dynamic Apnea without Fins (DNF)
- Static Apnea (STA)
- Speed Apnea 100 m
- Endurance Apnea 16×50 m
The tournament kicked-off with Dynamic No Fins on Wednesday. Among the 45 participants, 30 men and 15 women, Alessia Zecchini and Olivier Elu have won respectively the women and men podiums.
Zecchini, the unstoppable Italian CMAS champion, once again set a new (CMAS) World Record, breaking her previous mark of 165.34 m with a fantastic new performance measured at 171.22 m.
In the men ranking, Frenchman Olivier Elu positioned himself first with an amazing 189.65m once again setting a new CMAS World Record. Elu beat the previous World Record of 182.88 m held by Arthur Guérin-Boéri as the French CMAS domination in DNF continues.
Worthy of mention was previous world record holder Guérin-Boéri’s performance of 221m (in 4’50” !!) but the performance was not considered valid due to a late start.
Let us be reminded that CMAS rules vary slightly from the more widely known AIDA competition regulations. While under AIDA the athlete has a 10 second window AFTER the official top to immerse him/herself without a penalty, under CMAS the athlete must depart at any time within 3 minutes BEFORE the official top after which time an automatic disqualification is incurred.
While many people within the freediving community have observed that CMAS World Records are often of lesser value (in time and distance) than their AIDA counterparts, it’s important to note that the CMAS World Records (244m Ilaria Bonin / 294m Alex Duvivier) in DYN are higher than the current AIDA records (237m Natalia Molchanova / 285m Mateusz Malina).
We will have to wait until Saturday the 11th to see the performances in Dynamic With Monofin (under CMAS, monofin and bi-fins are separate disciplines) and a chance to perhaps see these records pushed back once again.
Until then, Thursday is gonna be a very busy day for the athletes as 3 disciplines are on the menu: Static and the lesser known (but equally exciting) Speed Apnea (100m) and Endurance Apnea (16x50m).
