The French freediving portal Esprit Apnée brought an interesting interview with the winner and the new French record holder
Frédéric Sessa:
http://www.espritapnee.com/content/view/104/1/
(that's in French. The English Google translation is not too bad for an automate, so you can check it out:
Translated version of http://www.espritapnee.com/content/view/104/1/)
Although the new French record of 200m is not so exceptional in the AIDA world, I think we'll still hear from Fred. He is in fact only learning freediving and the technique. This is his second season in competitive freediving, and he uses monofin only
since December 2007! And that's the Breier monofin that is not really quite popular among freedivers. Also, he uses
no weights, not even for the 142 m DNF (in a 50 m pool). Do not ask me why. Well, he
does not pack either, but still I am sure it would make a difference if he was properly weighted. This photo is allegedly taken just after the start from the wall, but there was an angle during the entire swim anyway.
agen.jpg photo © Esprit Apnée
Also his surface protocols in all disciplines were surprisingly clean. Unlike AIDA, FFESSM (officially) does not tolerate any controlled samba during the SP, but frankly told I saw couple of rather apparent LMC's. While newbies are usually immediately disqualified in such case, at "big names" the tolerance was beyond limits (I saw even at least two completely messed up surface protocols been OKed at some of the favorites)
More photos from the competition at
http://www.espritapnee.com/galerie/thumbnails.php?album=29
Official results at:
http://apnee.ffessm.fr/Competition/2...ntibes2008.pdf