Picture Credit: Daan Verhoeven (www.daanverhoeven.com)
Alice swam 200m on one breath & is through to A-Finals
On Wednesday 29 June at the Individual AIDA Pool World Championships in Finland, Alice Hickson swam 200m on one breath of air using a monofin (that’s 4 lengths of an olympic size swimming pool), breaking the British dynamic national record by 14m. The previous record, 186m, was held by Rebecca Coales set on 29 November 2014 in Stockport.
Asked about how she was feeling before the swim or if she had any expectations or goals in mind, Alice had this to say:
“I just went with the same old get in and do my best, come up clean, that’s all I can do. I didn’t have a number in mind, it’s only my 3rd ever top in dynamic. I just wanted to come up clean as I knew my mum might be watching on the live stream! During the dive I was thinking about the huge Waterpark next to the pool which were going to go play on in a bit.”
Impressively, Alice now holds all three pool discipline national records: in competition she has held her breath for 6 minutes 58 seconds, swam 174m with no fins and now 200m with a monofin. Alice has been freediving for less than two years and burst onto the scene in style last year’s Pool World Championships in Serbia when she won a gold medal and title of World Champion, a bronze medal and broke 3 national records. Not bad going for competing at her second ever competition!
The Pool World Championship in Finland is not over yet – athletes compete in the three pool freediving disciplines: static apnea, dynamic no fins and dynamic. The qualifying heats are now complete and Alice has won a place in all three of A-Finals which is quite a feat – it shows what an all-round athlete in the pool she is. The A-Finals will start on Friday 1 July and finish on Sunday 3 July.