Under the sea, beyond the limits of silence

In Sant'Angelo from October 4 to 11

Here we are that, with the reverential silence that characterizes this discipline, we are preparing to host the first World Championship of apnea outdoor CMAS in Ischia. The organization of this competition was entrusted to the Italian Federation of Sport Fishing and Underwater Activities, which has chosen our waters for this challenge.

After a long negotiation, Ischia won thanks to the support of the City of Serrara Fontana, its whole council and the beautiful surroundings of Sant’Angelo, which has snatched the first nomination in Capri.
The championships will start as scheduled on October 5, in the evening there will be a ceremony of official opening, always in the square of Sant’Angelo.
In our waters, without direct spectators and only a few fishes that peep out from the depths of the sea, in the obsequious silence of the deep sea, in a few moments, men and women will compete in a field that nature would want to deny. It is the challenge that has always characterized our desire to go to reach own limits, to experience new frontiers. A journey into silence, where every feeling, every heartbeat, is perceived, listened, understood, won.
Just here, two species meet each other, as in the words of Charles Baudelaire « Man, no one has sounded the depth of your being. O, Sea, no person knows your hidden riches, so zealously do you keep your secrets! ».
The subjects included in this race are all in constant order. Athletes must get on and off along a cable, to the fixed depth, with only the help of fins or monofin and in another discipline, with only the hands and barefoot. Each athlete must declare the night before, the depth to achieve. On the race day, the focus will be on duty on the athlete on call that, after the time spent on the surface to prepare for the performance; he will find himself on the cable down to the deep blue. After a long descent, partly with their eyes closed, to try all the possible concentration, on the bottom will find only a card. After tearing up the baton from the plate will begin the ascent. At this point, every gesture, every movement of the body has to be perfect. At 40 meters, the first meeting with the support of divers, from then on no longer alone, but from then on it begins the hardest part. Finally exit, the control protocol, then the validation.
The fourth discipline will be the Jump Blue. The athletes in this case must descend to a depth of 10 meters and follow a long and squared path of 15 meters per side. The winner is who travels a distance greater.
Personally, for three years I have been involved in the organization of different races and two Italian championships, one as an organizer and the other as a collaborator. In addition to the races, our Diving has been chosen repeatedly as support for different record attempts in apnea.
Unlike the records in the variable order, made with the aid of a weight to descend and an inflatable balloon to go up, the races in constant order have a different charm. Sometimes it is even sweeter, characterized by an elegance particularly pronounced in the “fair sex” that, with the advent of the monofin, make diving in apnea even more sinuous and elegant: as they want to remind the sirens, sorceresses of the sailors in the Odyssey.
This time, as always associate with the entire staff of ANS Diving Ischia, we are going to participate in this important challenge. We can only be proud of the opportunity that has been offered by the leadership Fipsas. The challenge is tough and demanding, as well as being quite protracted in time. The top athletes in fact, have come to Sant’Angelo since September 16. Unlike what one could believe, in apnea nothing is obvious.
Everything must be done with the utmost precision, is not allowed to improvise with an athlete who drops to depths close to or greater than 100 meters. For his safety, every athlete goes down, bound, along the cable up to the plate. The cable in turn is secured in the boat, at any time the plate with the diver can be recovered in a few seconds through a safety mechanism. At those depths, everything becomes difficult even simply to anchor. For boats that we used in races or in record attempts, during these years, it was necessary only a heavier anchor than usual, but during the Race everything will be done via a pontoon. We currently have about 50 registered athletes; the Italian National Team has an excellent level of preparation, both in men than in women club. Obviously, the sea will decide who will be the winner, who through own preparation, concentration will be able to bring to the surface from the depths the deeper witness. We like to think that whatever happens, anyone bring home the gold medal or the new world record, the winner is always the sea with its “hidden riches”.