From the last Wednesday to Sunday, there was a national championship in underwater sports in Antibes, France, organized by FFESSM (French branch of CMAS). Besides the classical freediving disciplines static apnea, dynamic apnea with fins, and dynamic apnea without fins, there were 50 m apnea sprint (with start from blocks), and also some other
disciplines (some of them apnea related):
- underwater hockey
- underwater target shooting (tir sur cible)
- fin swimming (diverse disciplines from 50 m in pool to 20 km outdoors)
- white-water swimming
- underwater orienteering
- swimming pool UW photography
The most interesting was probably the new French national record of 200 m in DYN by Frédéric Sessa. He won also the DNF discipline with 142 m (this was the first time DNF was on a FFESSM competition, so few athletes trained intensively for this discipline). The victory and the records of Frédéric Sessa were rather surprising, because until now only few freedivers ever heard about him. Although a relative newcomer, he is an ex water polo player, and a spearfisher. He used stiff carbon Breier monofin (there were many Breier monofins and bi-fins on the competition).
The 200 m were expected, but not from Sessa, rather from Mathieu Fabry. Mathieu allegedly does them in training, but after seeing the record taken by Frédéric, he preferred not risking disqualification (any sign of samba would mean 2 months disqualification, and elimination from the team for the CMAS World Championship in Turkey this summer) and did just easy ~190 m (the performance was penalized by some meters for not touching the wall at the start).
There was also a respectable performance of 175 m with bi-fins (also Breier), by Christophe Bruel.
You can find some comments, photos, and results on the forum of
Esprit Apnée, and more information about the competition (although no results yet) on the official competition website:
championnat antibes 2008