The second day of competitions at the CMAS Indoor World Championships in Lignano Sabbiadoro (Thursday June 9th) was a busy day with 3 disciplines, all very different from one another.
Besides the well known Static Apnea, contestants were also battling in 2 race disciplines: 100m Speed Apnea and 16×50 Endurance Apnea. These two disciplines are specific to CMAS and require a very different skill set from the usual freediving disciplines we are all familiar with. As such, the athletes competing under the race disciplines are often not the same athletes as those we see in Static and Dynamics.
The day kicked off with 100m Speed Apnea featuring 17 competitors: 7 women and 10 men. Excitement was very palpable after two World Records were set. The first one by Max Poschart from Germany who swam the two 50 meter laps in an outstanding time of 31sec 925ms. On the women’s side, Russian athlete Alina Markovtcova also set a new World Record by completing the race in 37sec 235ms.
In the men’s ranking Italian Stefano Konjedic placed second with an spectacular performance of 32sec 190ms while Russian Mikhail Drozdov came in third with a time of 32sec 775ms. As for the women rankings, Daria Dreger came close second with 38sec 290ms and Italian Erica Barbon landed third place with 38sec 445ms.
Later during the day, 36 athletes battled for the more popular Static Apnea discipline. Fantastic results by the French Vincent Mathieu who obtained Gold with a time of 8min 40sec, followed by his teammate Jean-Baptiste Savornin, with 8min 31sec. Italian Gaspare Battaglia came in third place.
In women’s static Gabriela Grezlova from Czech Republic landed first place with 7min 09sec. Not too far behind, French Magalie Siterre with 6min 43sec, confirming the amazing strength of the French Team in this discipline. Lastly we find Croatian Mihaela Romic in third place with 6min 33sec.
One point worthy of mention was the astonishing 10min 20sec performance by Serbian athlete Branko Petrovic, a performance that has not been validated since the Serbian Champion did not manage to complete his surface protocol in time.
The day ended with 16×50 Endurance Apnea, raced by 19 athletes: 8 women and 11 men. As with 100m Apnea Speed, we once again saw a double World Record also in this specialty with Italian Martina Mongiardino (participating in her first World Championship) closing the 16 x 50 meter laps in 12min 16sec. The second World Record was set by German Max Poschart with the time of 10min 06sec.
In the women classification, behind Martina Mongiardino we find German Carolin Haase, with a time of 13min 07sec, while the third place belongs to Russian Daria Dreger,with 13min 32sec. In the men’s ranking Kevin Provenzani from France secured the second position with 10min 33sec while Italian Matteo Rum completed the 800 meters race in 12min 08sec.
