Big Surprises at the World's Absolute Freediver Awards 2010
Lyon, France: Tuesday, January 18th, the freediving portal APNEA.cz announced the results of the annual award for the best and the most complete breath-hold divers. The top names of 2010 will surprise insiders and fans. Many will wonder why Herbert Nitsch, Natalia Molchanova, Martin Stepanek, Stephane Misfud, and other big names are missing on this list.
The biggest surprise is the absence of Natalia Molchanova on the top ten list (she ranked 11th). Natalia is a famous Russian freediver who broke 29 world records, and has been at the top since 2003. Until now, with two small exceptions, she was always ranked the first. And not only that - mostly she used to have better results than the best male freediver! So what happened? Did she lose her skill? No, it is not the case - she focused on setting another two new world records in 2010, and helped the Russian team to gain a silver medal on the AIDA Team Freediving World Championship in July. In 2010, she simply competed in only three of the six freediving disciplines, and this handicap was too high.
The absence of Molchanova allowed some other unexpected results. Liv Philip (UK), who won the top award this year, is an experienced freediver with a huge collection of gold medals from many competitions, and was on the top ten list already several times. Still, her victory is unforeseen, since she did not rank at the top of any individual discipline. Instead, she had excellent and balanced overall results.
The second rank of Rosibel Molina (Cuba) is a real bolt from the blue. She is a complete newcomer, and only participated in a single competition (PFI Déjà Blue on Cayman Islands). The third female rank belongs to the Swede Klara Hansson (5th in 2009).
And although the first place of William Trubridge among men was expected by all, it is also surprising, because he not only won the award despite competing only in five of the six disciplines in 2010, but he also broke the all-time highest score of Natalia Molchanova. Danish freedivers confirmed their qualities: Niels-Jakob Hansen on the second, and Rune Hallum Sørensen on the third rank.
The World's Absolute Freediver Award (WAFA) is an annual prize for freedivers with the highest combined score in six freediving disciplines: static apnea, dynamic apnea with fins, dynamic apnea without fins (pool disciplines), constant weight with fins, constant weight without fins, and free immersion (depth disciplines).
Apnea.cz is a popular freediving website, maintaining the database of freediving competitions of all coexisting freediving federations.
Contact Ivo Truxa at ivo@apnea.cz for more details, or for photos in print quality
