Tom Sietas: Was 2004 His Year ?
Posted By Aniko Kapornaki on 10 January 2005
TS- The secret of that is very simple. I regard freediving as a competitive sport, therefore I train very hard,almost every day. When I reached the point last year when my new goal became Martin Stepanek’s world record of 8’06”, I realized that I had to change my training routine. I had to increase my training intensity. For two weeks I trained every day. I had to organize helpers for my training, so I asked my friends and I rounded up a helper for each day. Like other parts of the body, lungs can be trained, too.
I stretched my lungs, and they adapted to it. I packed 20-30 times, and after two weeks of intensive training, I reached 8’06". Then, in February 2004, I trained for three weeks, packed 40 times, and I did 8’58”. Now my personal best is 9’46”. It all comes down to training hard enough. However, maybe that packing can have a long-term effect on me. That’s the thing I am most worried about. Hopefully, I will know more after the February medical checks.
AK- How do you suppress the mental and physical urges to come up and take a deep breath?
TS- My dives can be divided into two sections. The first five minutes, and the four following ones. In the first five minutes, the focus is on the mental relaxation. It’s like trying to go to sleep at night. First, the thought about your dinner with your girlfriend last night pops up, then you slowly try to clear your mind. You try to relax, you take a deep breath – well, the latter does not apply in my case… after about five minutes the mind is clear and I concentrate solely on my body. That’s when the body starts to give signs, my muscles start to contract. Interestingly, it is most intensive in my left calf. I try to focus on relaxing every muscle - during the second section of my dive, my main focus is on the body.
AK- As your results have become better and better, didn’t you feel that you were getting trapped in your own successes? You said after your world record in October that you needed a break because of mental exhaustion, but then you did another world record in Eindhoven. It may sound a far-fetched comparision, but your case reminds me of Celine Dion. She wanted to have a baby because her biological clock was ticking, and then came Titanic, with the song My Heart will Go On, and it was such a huge success that she simply did not have time to have a baby for another two years.
TS- I see what you mean, but you know, I’m afraid of taking a break now when I am on a winning streak, because something might happen to me, and then maybe I would not be able to compete at the highest level anymore. Therefore, I try to set the bar as high as I can, to make it harder for others to break my records in the future.
AK- I am sure there is one goal ahead of you that is more important than any other right now: that mythical 10-minute mark.
TS- Despite some private goals in my life - yes, I am not particularly interested in the nine-minute mark, but I definitely wanna be the person who breaks the 10-minute barrier. I plan to reach it in 2005, but in order to be able to do that officially, I need to do 11 minutes in training. Besides that, I want to become a world record holder in the two dynamic disciplines - finally. My personal best in Dynamic without fins is 200 meters, and my PB in Dynamic with fins is 210 meters. [The interview was made on the 16h of December, before Tom’s dive in Hamburg on the 18th-19th of December, where he reached 175 m without fins, and 215 with fins. These two have become national records, since there was no international judge at the scene.]
AK- That means that you basically swim as far during training without fins as the existing record with fins? Unbelievable! You know, I start to understand why people said after your A-sample result came out in September, and it was positive, that they had "known" Tom could not have done so much without doping, etc. It is hard to accept that you are capable of such results. On the other hand, it is your sheer determination that made me believe in your innocence all the way. You needed three months to prove your innocence. Could you tell me more about this?
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