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Posted By Alun George on 30 November 2004
AG: Can you tell me about the freediving research you’ve been doing recently? Are you involved with the Blue 2005 conference?
UP: Yes, I’m involved. I’m not the organiser, but some members of Apnea Academy form a scientific group which is in charge of the organisation of that conference. The group is working with the department of Underwater Medicine of the University of Rome and the CNR (the Italian National Centre of Research). They are trying to understand more about freediving and deep freediving. They have made special instruments to monitor the heart at great depths. They are preparing an X-ray machine for underwater. These instruments will tell us more about our nature and our physiology. I think it will be a good and important meeting, open to all schools and all the researching medical groups. I hope we will be able to understand more after the conference.
AG: Will the conference be mainly in Italian?
UP: I still don’t know. The conference will be held in December 2005 and I have to finish the organisation. I think that’s just a detail. They do many conferences like this and I think they have translators. Any particular program or speech is going to be translated for people who don’t understand Italian. There will be other speeches in English and Greek so I’m sure that it will be translated.
AG: Which of your personal qualities have helped you the most in your freediving career?
UP: I don’t know. You should ask this question to the people who met me during my career. I think having Jaques Mayol as a mentor helped me to forget the performance and look for the pleasure when diving. This made me change my technique underwater. I think the elegance I acquired during the first few years of my career was very important for my technique. I think you can improve with your muscles or improve with your mind. Probably improving with your mind takes longer and is more difficult to find the goal and it’s more difficult to realise that you’re getting better and better every day.
It’s easier diving with muscles. I think if you keep diving with muscles then when you stop improving you stop freediving because diving with muscles doesn’t allow you to understand the real pleasure of freediving. That’s what I think and that’s what I’ve learned during my freediving career. For example, I really like Carlos Coste. In my opinion he’s a really strong freediver, but not only for his performances. I like him for the way he dives and his elegance. He is strong for that reason. Guillaume Nery is a very elegant freediver and is very aquatic. I think the strong freediver is the freediver that make freediving look easy and effortless.
The message you have to pass to the people watching you is that freediving is the most simple thing in the world. You don’t want to give the impression that freediving is about strength and force. You have to show the people that you are going underwater as if you truly belong in the water. You don’t have to show that you are forcing or making a great effort. A strong freediver is strong when he’s able to pass a message of peace, freedom, well-being and relaxation when he’s going underwater. That’s why I like Carlos Coste and Guillaume Nery. For example, in Italy we have David Carrera. In my opinion, he’s not a champion in his mind but he’s the most elegant freediver in the world that I’ve ever seen. Looking at him it seems as if he is breathing underwater.
AG: Apart from Jaques Mayol were there any other role models that influenced your freediving career?
UP: No. I did my first world record in November 1990. At that time Pipin was completely unbeaten for three years. He was the king of freediving and when I arrived very few people were at a very high level in freediving. That was a very difficult time for me because I didn’t know how to train and I didn’t know how to prepare for a record or competition. I didn’t know when I had to start freediving to get ready for an event. I didn’t know how to train repetition and I didn’t know how to increase the depth of my dives and when I had to make the increases. I learned all these things from Mayol. No one else helped me with my technique.
AG: Have you had much contact with Pipin over the last few years?
UP: No, I didn’t have many contacts, but we’re not very friends, or strong friends. When he had the accident for his wife I wrote an email to him so he called my sister and he asked for my telephone number and he called me just 2 or 3 days after the accident. I was training in the sea with my team and some friends and plenty of people having dinner and he called me.
AG: Were there any moments in your freediving career that were turning points, i.e. one particular moment that really changed the course of your life or your freediving career?
UP: No, perhaps only in the beginning. When you spend nearly 25 years at school or university you can leave and realise that’s not what you want to do with your life. This was how I felt. I choose to pursue a career in freediving and follow the sea. That was probably the most important decision I made in my life. I can’t remember a particular moment during the last 12 years than really changed my life. It was a gradual discovery of everything. Whenever you go in the water are able to completely open your mind and understand yourself and your body. This is what I wanted. So there was no particular moment but gradually many moments together.
AG: Do you have any regrets in your freediving career?
UP: No. If I could go back 15 years I would do exactly the same things. Jaques Mayol told me many times “Remember, Umberto, when you’re old it’s better to leave only souvenirs rather than regrets”. I think I have many souvenirs and I don’t regret anything. Maybe I regret not using the monofin for constant weight!”
AG: I heard you’re close to you sister Stephania. How has she has supported you with your freediving career over the years?
UP: Stephania was like my manager. She helped me with many things, such as the organisation of records, my important contacts, dealing with my agent and organising my schedule. She was very important. I think it’s better to have a person like a sister or someone close to you as a manager, because you’re sure that the person has your best interests at heart. So I was very lucky in this sense to have my family close to me and my sister working for me. She has never worked for me 100% because she has her own job too, but I knew I could always rely on her help and that was very important psychologically. She’s still working for me now because I am travelling all the time,and so many people call her asking for information or whatever.
AG: What are your long term plans or ambitions in your life or in freediving in general?
UP: I don’t know. Probably having a little Pelizzari but I really don’t know. I’d like to have a baby but for what I’m doing now it’s not possible. I spend 8-10 months a year travelling around the world, and I like doing that. If you want to be a father you have to be there, so at the moment it’s just a fantasy belonging to my nature. I could be ready in my mind but I’m not ready in reality. That could be an important goal, more important than any world record.