Shark Freediving

The first freedive competitors are already arriving in Maribor. A sign that the start of the competition is close. I’ve done my homework, read the rules over and over again. Everybody is of course coming prepared as it should be, knowing the rules by heart. So when we have the captains meeting at night we can keep the session short, because there will be no questions about the rules. Yeah right!

One of the most asked questions is of course who is going to win the competition. The last minute entry of Austria with relative newbie Herbert Nitsch will probably not change to much in the total ranking, or will it? Let’s be honest, there are many competitors entering this competition knowing for sure that they will not make it to the finals. And most of them probably won’t make it, but some of them do make it to the finals because every time in any big competition there will be one big name who will push to much or break some rule, or do the surface protocol in reverse mode. So besides the fact that sometimes people just get disqualified for some reason, who are the athletes with the highest change of winning?

Let’s start with Men’s static. 66 male freedivers competing. My prediction for the freedivers in the final is; Stig Serverinssen, Christian Maldame, Timo Kinnunen, Deron Verbeck, Herbert Nitsch, Joki Antero, William Winram and Ryuzo Shinomiya. Minimum time to get in the finals will be 7:00 minutes. But I will not be shocked if we see some new eastern europe names in this list instead! There is really something going on over there, so who knows. Too bad Sam Still from the UK is not here to defend his title. My top three consits of:
1. Stig
2. Herbert
3. Timo

Next in line are the 33 women freedivers in static. After looking at ranking lists, competition results, the stars and my horoscope I come to the following final list; Natalia Molchanova, Lotta Ericson, Natalia Avseenko, Claudia Rollero, Jessica Wilson, Elisabeth Kristoffersen, Kathryn McPhee and Johanna Nordblad. Minimum time to get in the finals will be 5:45 at least! Also here is the possibility of some hidden talent from eastern countries we don’t really know of yet. My top three for this list is;
1. Natalia M
2. Jessica
3. Elisabeth

The next days I will publish my anticipated final list about the dynamic disciplines. So what is your guess? Am I missing any big names here? Let me know in the comments and I will take them in consideration and look them up during training to see how they are doing, so I can report my final list the day before static competition.