Thanks for the kind words guys. Was a massive thrill to be able to get past 40m in training but was incredibly annoying that my cold got worse and worse towards the end of the competition. The only reason I could dive at all was the constant nasal rinsing I was doing morning and night. On comp day I had issues getting to 15m in my warm ups so I took it slower on the actual dive, and after 35m or 36m I couldn't equalise at all but managed to get to the plate, albeit with a bit of pressure in the ears. Partly due to the blocked nose but mainly due to inexperience in deep equalisation. You can read Frenzal/Fattah till the cows come home but you need to get in the water to put it into practice - it's not like in the matrix where you plug in and suddenly know Kung Fu
My D3 screwed up on comp day so registered a dive to 145m in 3 seconds at -87c temp :duh
Highlights for me were Theo's 75m PB in constant weight and his US National record 149m dynamic, Remi's 42m constant no fins French National Record, watching the Stig/Timo/Herbert static challenge (in Guillaume Nery's words over the loudspeaker - "Suspense! Suspense! Suspense!") and watching the Danish guys go nuts in the pool, especially Henning's mammoth 214m... such a slow dynamic, the yells from the crowd when he turned at 200m made the air electric, then the exasperated gasp when he went into LMC. Mentally exhausting stuff! I did video it however the light reflecting on the water meant you can't see most of it. The LMC was not the worst i've seen, he came back relatively quickly. Mark's performances were fantastic to watch too - great constant and static and a PB in dynamic.
Lowlights - Weine's lung squeeze (though great to see him up and about the next day) and Herbert missing the WR.
Though the real dampener on the weekend was when a few of us were having a celebratory beer at a restaurant on Sunday evening and a gang chased a guy into the restaurant and stabbed him... absolutely horrible mindless violence.
Nice is a stunning place to dive, great weather and the best diving conditions i've been in. Francois, Cedric and the rest of the guys are fantastic people, I look forward to seeing them again sometime in the not too distant future.
Cheers,
Ben
ps here's a photo of Herbert in the last few seconds of his static.