Modern free diving is a sport in which divers, on a single breath, descend hundreds of feet, into cold and darkness, and often pass out before they return. It is frequently described as the world’s second most dangerous sport, after jumping off skyscrapers with parachutes. There are eight disciplines, three of which are conducted in a pool; the rest are called deep disciplines. The pool disciplines are static apnea, which is holding one’s breath; dynamic with fins (swimming underwater as far as one can, sometimes with flippers or with a monofin, which looks like a mermaid’s tail); and dynamic without fins. The five main deep disciplines are free immersion, which involves pulling oneself up and down a rope in open water; constant weight, in which a diver wears fins and a small amount of weight; constant weight without fins; variable weight, in which a diver descends on a metal device called a sled and swims to the surface; and no limits, in which a diver rides a sled and is then pulled to the surface by an air bag. Competitions are not held in no limits or variable weight, because they are so dangerous; divers can only attempt records. No divers have died in free-diving competitions. (Death by free diving usually occurs when spear fishermen who dive alone stay down too long. A few years ago, one drowned when he speared a huge grouper that fled into a hole; the fisherman’s spear gun was tied to his wrist and he couldn’t get free.) Divers, however, have died trying to set records in no limits. The most famous case was that of a twenty-eight-year-old Frenchwoman named Audrey Mestre, who drowned in 2002, during a poorly supervised dive with her husband, when her air bag didn’t inflate, leaving her too deep to reach the surface.The most prestigious discipline is constant weight—the diver must return to the surface with the weight that he or she wore to descend. The women’s record for constant weight is ninety-six metres, which took three minutes and thirty-four seconds. (The men’s record is a hundred and twenty-two metres.) For women, a hundred metres is a barrier something like the four-minute mile used to be, and the diver who is the first to accomplish the feat will have a prominent place in the annals of the sport. Only two women are thought to be capable of it. One is Sara Campbell, a British diver who lives in Egypt, and the other is Natalia Molchanova, a Russian who lives in Moscow. Campbell set the record of ninety-six metres in April, in the Bahamas, breaking Molchanova’s record of ninety-five, which had broken Campbell’s record of ninety. Five days after Campbell reached ninety-six metres, she dived to a hundred, returned to the surface, took two breaths, and passed out. (A safety diver caught her.) The rules governing record dives require that a diver remain conscious for sixty seconds after surfacing, so Campbell’s dive was nullified. (...)
The day before a competition, a diver announces the dive that he or she will attempt. This gives the judges time to send scuba divers to set the rope at the proper length and to leave at the bottom a plate with a tag that the free diver brings back to the surface. The diver attaches a lanyard to the rope with a carabiner for safety, but if he pulls the rope with his hands, except within a certain zone at the bottom, he is disqualified. Many divers, Campbell among them, don’t like to wear goggles or a mask during competition and so dive with their eyes closed most of the way. (As for knowing where the surface is, Molchanova has written, “It is possible to feel the thickness of water layer above and below you, in front of you and behind.”) I asked Campbell whether she could announce a hundred-metre dive, then, once she’d started, decide whether she could complete it. She shook her head. “You commit to a dive or you don’t,” she said. “If any part of my mind has an awareness that I can turn, I probably will turn. For me, the process of a dive starts a week before the dive. If you start training yourself to think, I’ll announce a hundred, but maybe I’ll turn at eighty, well, it takes only a split second to grab the line for a negative thought, and that’s your dive.” (...)
Campbell did not dive the next day, which was Saturday. On Sunday morning, in the white-hot Egyptian sun, I went with her to the Hyperbaric Medical Center, in Sharm al-Sheikh, a small building with glass doors. The biggest object in the office was a hyperbaric chamber the size of a small house trailer—it looked like a propane tank—for treating scuba divers suffering from the bends, which is caused by excessive nitrogen in the tissues and blood. (Free divers do not typically get the bends, apparently because there is not enough nitrogen in a single held breath to provoke it.) The doctor, a heavyset Egyptian, asked Campbell about her symptoms. She said she felt a little better. The doctor made some notes, and then he said, “You shouldn’t compete. You shouldn’t risk your life.”
Campbell exhaled, and her jaw seemed to tighten. “You will have a chance to do it again,” the doctor said soothingly. “Although probably not before your rival does.”
