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Day 10: June 10th, 2004

Written by Rudi Castineyra

Well, today was meant to be a rest day, but instead, we decided to go out and do a couple of shallow dives with David to work on his technique, as he will be going for another record in a couple of days. After his 63 meter record, David was obviously happy with the result, but he was also very self-critical. Despite my praise for his technique, he was not really pleased with it after seeing the tapes from our 4 video cameras. He felt he could have been more efficient and streamlined, and he definitely wanted to make sure he would make the same mistake for the next attempt. So, though I would not call the great dive he did a “mistake”, I agreed that if you feel there is space for improvement, and you want to work at it, then by all means you should. This desire to do better than good, to be as close to perfect as you can possibly be is, in my opinion, one of the things that separates the world champions from the great athletes.

And so, out we went to work on his technique. I didn’t want him to push his ear too much, as it still was recovering from the 63 meter dive, so we decided on 2 dives to 35 meters as the perfect compromise between deep enough to get some work done and not deep enough to really put the ear under serious pressure. We had been reviewing the videos from both David and Yas, and chosen the bits of technique that have proven to be working so well for her, and what would be the best way to incorporate them into David’s style, given his physical particularities. I have to say that he got it right down to the smallest detail, he was looking very, very, very smooth and fluid in the water today. For the first time, he was able to comfortably reach his break point of 20 meters in only 4 strokes as opposed to his usual 6, and to do it while using less energy. As for the ascent, he managed to bring the arms up for the start of the down stroke in the “cross” maneuver that so well works for Yas, and it had the same incredible results with him. He was adding a “scissors” motion at the end of the leg kick as we had planned, and this resulted in a considerable amount of extra propulsion too. All in all, it was a good and productive day and we are confident that this progress can translate into an easier dive for David on his upcoming second and last record attempt. Lastly, today was the first day of diving on our bigger boat, as we moved from the old wooden 9-meter long “Sundiving” boat to the twin-engine, metal hull, 16-meter long “Dadga”, a much more comfortable vessel. So, it felt good to have all this extra space available, along with bathroom, showers, lockers, onboard work shop, compressor, gas mixer, etc. We are also testing this boat during this period, as we are seriously considering it among our prime candidates for the sled records we want to attempt later in the year. So, for its first sea trial, we were all left with a favorable impression, and this was good. And that’s it, tomorrow we might attempt another deep dive to record depths with Yas, though it is still pretty much up in the air as her back is still bothering her considerably and we don’t want to push her unnecessarily, since she still has to attempt a record on Friday, when the press will be here and the dive will be broadcasted LIVE to several TV channels. So, we’ll see you tomorrow and let you know it goes.

David’s comments:

After today I felt a little better to see that I actually possessed the ability to do proper technique. It was amazing doing the strokes properly I could feel the skin on my face flapping from the speed I was gaining. This was good but it was also bad. Increased speed also meant that I would have trouble equalizing fast enough to catch up to the increased descent rate. Anyway we just did two dives to 35m and I was feeling a bit more confident about the next record attempt.