From Kona to Almost the One
Posted By Deron Verbeck on 17 June 2003
Planning for my trip to the Sony Freediver Open Classic in Limassol, Cyprus started back in late Oct 2002 right after the Pacific Cup here in Kona. The Cyprus competition was the major international competition of the year after the 2003 World championships in Turkey were cancelled. I have watched other professional athletes in freediving such as Tanya Streeter, my fellow American Team member, make a living from promoting the sport with sponsors and TV and I thought that finding the finances to get me to the competition could not be that difficult. I was very wrong. I started working on getting sponsorship and found out very quickly that getting sponsors is an extremely tough job. I applied for a grant from the Outrigger Kahanamoku Foundation and after much waiting and pleading I received some financial help. I approached Picasso America and asked if they would help me out and be my wetsuit sponsor. He kindly referred me to Sterling Kaya at Hana Pa’a Hawaii saying he was his rep for Hawaii. After many emails he sent me a size chart for a custom suit and agreed to supply me a great suit, which would prove invaluable.
After many phone calls and many more emails I ended up raising a little over $4000.00 to cover my expenses all from local business and particular thanks to Fair Wind where I work. Now I could afford to make the trip to Cyprus. I didn’t expect the US dollar to be so worthless there; the exchange rate did not work in my favor so I was on a serious budget.
I started training the first day after my arrival to acclimatize to the water temperature and ocean conditions. The water was much colder than I was used to, but the suit kept me warm. I was much more buoyant than I had trained with so I had to wear more weight. I had a couple of good days of training then a day of not feeling well so I decided to take a couple of days off and wait for official training on the competition barge.
The first day of official training went great, I was warm and comfortable in the water and my entire warm up dives went great. On my target dive I reached a depth of 210ft and surfaced clean and controlled.
The next day May 26th, my birthday, I was a bit nervous before my dive. I wanted to dive to at least 210ft again to be confident that I could do it, and then I’d pull back a bit and attempt 206ft in competition to become the deepest male American in an international competition. Previous World record holder Brett LeMaster held that distinction from last year at the Pacific Cup at 203ft. My dive went without a hitch and upon surfacing checked my gauge, it read 230ft my new personal record and pretty good birthday present to myself. Now I had to make up my mind on what I was going to attempt for the competition, I decided on 213ft. I felt confidant I could make it all I had to do is prove it.
Competition day came, I had never been so nervous. I had woken up at about 4:00am and waited until it was time to catch the shuttle boat out to the barge. I went to the competition solo, so I had no coach or teammates to help me with warming up and taking me through the competition. I asked a fellow freediver to help me in the competition zone. I did my warm ups by myself with no problem, but it was good to have someone there in the competition zone. I made my way into the competition zone and was overwhelmed by safety divers strapping on the official depth gauge and safety lanyard, I was also getting kicked by the safety divers from the other competition line. I focused on the task at hand and got myself into a mental zone. I had been shivering up until this point because the water temperature had dropped drastically, now that was gone. The months of training had kicked in and I was on autopilot.
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