Brigitte Nathansen gives the “I’m okay” signal after surfacing during the 2023 Aida Freediving New Zealand Pool Nationals. Photo: Adrian Bosi
Most sports people aspire to reach new heights.
For Cambridge’s Brigitte Nathansen it’s the complete opposite – she is training with the target of plumbing new depths.
Nathansen made a splash at her first freediving competition – the 2023 Aida Freediving New Zealand Pool Nationals – just shy of a month after taking up the sport in August.
She was second in the recreation grade at Auckland’s Sir Owen G. Glenn National Aquatic Centre last month.
The category is for first time free diving competition entrants and Nathansen’s total points across the three different disciplines she completed in – statics, dynamics with fins and dynamics without fins helped her achieve second place overall.
She beat all her previous personal bests in the disciplines in doing so.
In free diving, the static discipline involves a competitor lying on their stomach in a pool, holding their breath underwater for as long as possible without swimming. Dynamics involves swimming underwater for as far as possible on one breath.
There are dynamics categories in which swimmers can use fins or swim without them.
Competing in the static category in Auckland, Nathansen – who trains twice a week with the Waikato Freediving Club at Te Rapa Waterworld – held her breath for three minutes, 51 seconds, beating her previous personal best by four seconds.
In the dynamics with fins event, Nathansen swam 77m, 50m further than her previous personal best – without fins she reached 40m, 15m further than her previous personal best.
Her coach Jack Hamilton also competed in Auckland, setting a national record when winning the competition’s AIDA grade.
“Jack’s been really encouraging in helping me learn and has already taught me so much,” Nathansen said. “I’d say free diving is a lesser known sport at the moment, I’m really keen to see it grow.”
Though she wouldn’t describe her background as particularly “sporty”, she has previously been a dancer and thinks that might help her when it comes to already having good core strength.
So, likely from next month, as the warmer summer months approach, Nathansen – an activities assistant at Bupa St Kilda Care Home – said she wants to start training toward depth competitions, to see how deep she can dive.
“I already really love freediving, it’s so peaceful. I was like a lot of others in lockdown and had a bit of free time. I found a free diving video online,” Nathansen told The News of how she discovered the sport.
“The competitor was swimming with what’s known as a monofin – or one big fin – and to me it made them look like a mermaid underwater.
“I thought to myself, man, I want to be a mermaid.”
She said she wasn’t nervous before her first competition last month, and that in fact the opposite – keeping calm – gives one the best shot at success in free diving.
Looking ahead, Nathansen said while she hasn’t considered an ultimate free diving goal, she has aspirations in the immediate future she wants to tick off.
Though she swam in bi fins – or a fin on each foot in the competition in Auckland – her next aim is to learn to swim with a monofin, she said.
Then, Nathansen wants to increase her static breath hold to over four minutes and reach 100m or more in the dynamics with fins category at a future competition.
“It’s one goal at a time. I’m having so much fun in free diving at the moment,” she said.
Cambridge free diver Brigitte Nathansen pictured with her coach Jack Hamilton after being named the runner up in the recreation grade of the AIDA Freediving New Zealand Pool Nationals. Photo: Adrian Bosi
