The 2012 team World Championships are well underway in Nice, France. Teams of freedivers from around the globe have descended upon the idyllic coastline of Villefranche-su-Mer to see which country will reign supreme as the world champions of competitive freediving this 20th anniversary of AIDA. Athletes from Croatia, Venezuela, the United States, Japan, Finland and more are showing their prowess in three disciplines: Constant Weight, Static and Dynamic.
Three days into the international event France has demonstrated a strong “home-team” advantage. Completing a superb dive to an amazing 114 meters on Tuesday, Guillaume Nery has performed the single deepest dive to date.
Fellow country-woman Aurore Asso handily nabbed herself a white-card and a new national record for France the same day with a clean constant weight dive to 76 meters. (Watch a video of Aurore setting her previous record in Okinawa here.)
Unfortunately, day three of the competition manifested bad weather and ocean swells that halted the event and suspended many scheduled performances, with waves even knocking some of the athletes off of the competition platform.
See all of the results so far for the Women here and all of the results for the Men here, also just for fun check out a set of RANKING PREDICTIONS from Apnea.cz which estimates where the results might end up based on announced performances and quantified existing personal bests. Stay tuned to DeeperBlue for more fresh news from Nice.
photo © daanver hoeven