
The Disappearance of the World’s Greatest Free Diver - Thevet
http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/the-disappearance-of-the-worlds-greatest-free-diver
======
postila
I've started to learn freediving since 2010 with Natalia and Alexey. All
trainings with them were always amazing. I even decided to move my family to
live next to the pool (in Moscow) where they do daily training -- to be able
to train more often.

Every sea training in Dahab was always a LOT of fun and great experience for
my whole life. There was always some magic around Natalia – you understand
that you're sitting next to one of the greatest humans in the world, who is
able to do smth absolutely incredible and it's hard to reflect how deep are
the feelings inside you during those moments. Her lectures and discussions
were interesting even if you hear it for 2nd or 3rd or 4th time :) I will
always remember that parts of my life and it's really smth that is absolutely
remarkable and amazing.

Those freediving trainings changed my life a lot. They changed how I think
about anything what surrounds me: you consider any thing like "it's a part of
the huge world", you fall in anger much less often, you become more stable,
and strong.

I also will always remember when I went to just another training in the pool
and right after that realized that Natalia just made yet another world (!)
record during Russian competition. Or later, In Kalamata, Greece, in 2011,
when she did a couple of depth records, in World Championship.. It was BIG. It
was EPIC. Always. Every her move.

When I moved to San Francisco a couple of years ago, I was missing freediving
and Natalia a lot. It's strange that there is almost no freedivers in SF and
Bay area. I see huge potential in this kind of sport for tech guys in
California – we are always sitting with our computers and are lacking some way
to reboot our mind. Freediving is GREAT way to get rid of everything useless
from your brain at the end of every hard day. But maybe the ocean is too cold,
or visibility is low.. Don't know, but I hope it'll become popular some day in
this part of the world.

I should say special words about Alexey. This young guy (28 y.o.) is in his
very difficult times these days. He should be strong to go through these days
and months and years. He is active World Champion and World Record holder (WR:
128m in depth, with monofin only). But this is very personal and not so
difficult as another thing – Natalia built probably the strongest local
freediving school (thousands of people graduated) and strong national
freediving organization – and the question is whether or not he will find
enough power to continue this work. It's hard time...

We all loved (and love and will love) Natalia. We wish all the good to Alexey
and his sister, Oksana.

R.I.P Natalia. Thank you for all you did for us.

------
ChuckMcM
More of an obituary really. A really amazing woman with what seemed to me to
be an inhuman ability to go without breathing.

I have never had the courage to be this kind of athlete, whether it is free
diving or base jumping or any other sport where dying is only slightly less
likely than not dying. And have always wondered about what they are thinking
when they start out on their next "event", do they make their peace with God
each time? Will fully disbelieve their chances of dying? Recheck their will
and other documents? I like to believe she died doing something she loved
doing, I really hope that is true.

~~~
kukx
"I like to believe she died doing something she loved doing", like it makes
any difference for her.

~~~
Retra
People don't say that for her, they say that to convince themselves that death
isn't as bad as it is.

~~~
duaneb
Death has no valuation. It is not good or bad. It is just the progress of time
and the existence of entropy. Everything must die.

Dying is scary. Death is not.

~~~
iamme
My take on death is since there is no way to be certain what happens after
death, all possibilities are, well, possible. Death can be extremely good,
extremely bad, neutral or anywhere in between.

Yes, I'm talking about life after death here. I think it's relevant to the
OP's comment because what happens after death (good, bad, nothing) logically
effects the valuation of death.

Since it is inherently very difficult if not impossible to scientifically
evaluate what the probabilities are in terms of life after death, it's pretty
much a crap shoot and what we choose to believe about it is based on faith (in
nothing, God, etc). Also see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager)

~~~
Retra
The concept is self-contradictory, and thus not possible. That is knowable.
It's also incoherent, and thus not a justifiable position even if it weren't
self-contradictory.

PS: Pascal's Wager can be used to justify any belief whatsoever. It's not a
good argument for anything.

~~~
iamme
> The concept is self-contradictory, and thus not possible.

Ok, let me frame it this way then. We're talking about the possibility of (a
different kind of) life after _physical_ death. My assertion is that there is
no way to prove its existence or its non-existence. Therefor, any assertion
about its nature or lack there of is uniformly based on faith.

> Pascal's Wager can be used to justify any belief whatsoever.

Not sure I follow you on this one, but it's not central to the discussion
here.

Thought about it more and I think I understand your reasoning now. But I
included Pascal's wager not to justify any particular belief (although I can
totally see why you came to that conclusion as Pascal does come to a concrete
conclusion in terms of a particular belief).

I included Pascal's wager not for his conclusion but because it supports my
assertion that one can not know what happens after physical death. Therefore,
any conclusion about that is based on faith alone.

EDIT: Addition to last point.

~~~
Retra
>We're talking about the possibility of (a different kind of) life after
physical death

I know what you're talking about. And it is still not possible because it's a
vacuous assertion. (And there's no such thing as 'non-physical' death, so that
qualifier doesn't do anything. The word 'physical' is, for the most part,
useless.)

But why are you even talking about life after death? Why aren't you talking
about the invisible giant crab that's eating you right now? Or the dream that
you're going to wake up from? Or the existence of Hogwarts?

You simply can't argue "nobody can really know" to a rational person in a
convincing way. A rational person then must conclude that it doesn't even
matter -- You have to make decisions, and you can't make reliable decisions by
cherry picking belief in one absurd thing over the trillions of other absurd
things.

We could debate all day about the possible existence of Hogwarts, but it would
be stupid: we both know that it is a fiction, even though nobody can "prove
for certain" that it isn't. We know this because the world we live in doesn't
change if the existence of the thing changes. Nobody can make different
decisions.

And when something _fundamentally_ doesn't matter, that means it encodes no
information about (non-mental) reality, and is thus meaningless, and can't be
claimed to exist by default.

>I included Pascal's wager not for his conclusion but because it supports my
assertion that one can not know what happens after physical death.

We know what happens after death. Many people have died, and you can look
around and see what is happening right now. If you're talking about what
happens to your subjective experiences afterward, then that's an experience
singularity. A "north of the north pole" kind of absurdity. I don't suppose
you're willing to argue that nobody knows if there's land north of the north
pole, are you?

You don't see the circular reasoning involved in claiming that someone must
actually _visit_ north of the north pole to conclude it doesn't exist? So why
should anyone have to return from life after death to know that it is fiction?

------
soci
"No one knows what happened to her. There were powerful currents in the deep
water beneath her and she may have been somehow carried away. She may have
lost consciousness."

I've been freediving for 20 years now and I've never heard of anyone (nor
myself) having trouble reaching the surface because of currents. Strong
currents affecting a freediver are lateral, not vertical.

Not trying to say currents are not dangerous for freedivers. I've friends who
did end up lost for hours in the surface because of currents. Also, if you
want to reach a certain spot in the sea floor and there is current you will
consume more O2 and you increase your chances of blackout before reaching
surface.

But dying because of being carried away? hmm no..

So, the only true thing is that she did black out and did not come to the
surface. The current is the reason why they are not finding her. No one will
ever know why she blacked out.

edit: typos

~~~
smt88
What about the fact that she was wearing weights? Could that have caused a
lateral current to affect her vertically?

~~~
soci
Weights are small pieces of lead used to compensate the wetsuit buoyancy. They
don't have a big surface so they don't have hydrodynamic impact.

In some freediving disciplines weights may be used to go deeper in less time,
but then you leave the weight at the bottom, otherwise you would not be able
to come back to the surface.

~~~
smt88
I think the article I saw said that they believed she'd lost consciousness
(somehow due to the current) and been unable to remove the weights. Could that
explain it?

------
sovande
The concentration technique (attention deconcentration) mentioned in the
article sounds very interesting. Anyone know more or have tried it? Edit:
Could be a useful technique when free-diving into a code base. Apropos diving,
another concept that comes from the diving world which I have found useful in
Software Development is "incident pit" which can be useful as a perspective to
post mortem failed projects and conversely for a PM to know about the danger
signs.

~~~
postila
Every time you drive a car you do sort of it. You cannot concentrate all your
attention on one small thing -- you rather should do deconcentration and
observe many objects at the same time.

Another example is searching mushrooms. If you do concentrate, you're not
effective.

There are much more examples in the life.

~~~
agumonkey
I do this, but it forces me to drive slower, which isn't such a bad thing in
the end. Feels like playing music a bit. You have to 'observe' the
surroundings through a mental abstraction of many moving things and try to
maintain an overall consistency between them all. We are ACID databases.

~~~
postila
There are simple exercises to improve deconcentrations skills:

1) [Vision] Look at some point (try to avoid thinking about the point itself),
then think about what you observe at top left corner, then (moving slowly,
after 15-30 seconds) at top edge, top right corner, etc. When 360˚ are
finished, start again but think about several parts of viewport at the same
time. Then just try to relax and think about the WHOLE picture. It takes some
time to achieve good results, but if you do this training several days you
will see changes in your attention level – it's like you see nothing and
everything at the same time and once something special (like mushroom or what
you're looking for) arrives in your viewport – in this state of mind, you find
it VERY fast, even if it's semi-hidden and is located on very periphery.

2) [Sounds] The same: relax and try to distinguish only one noise that is
happening around you (like bird singing or smth). Then, after some time spent,
proceed to the next noice (cars or wind or anything else). Then next and next.
After several minutes you will wonder how many different sounds is around.
Then try to relax more and combine all of them.

3) ["Internals", your body]. Try to concentrate only on one part of your body
-- say, fingers on your left leg. Then on the right one. The upper, part of
leg. Step by step, spending a dozen of seconds or so on one small part of your
body, proceed upper. Dont forget to concentrate on inner body part, organs.
Once all parts are done, relax more and observe entire body.

4) ["Externals", space]. Concentrate on what you have in front of you. Then
behind you. On the left, on the right. Upper and lower. Imaging the building
(or park or field or smth) where are you now. There is no need to see it, just
imagine. Just reflect in your mind how it looks, feels. Then a block where
your house is located (forest or county or smth), then your
town/distrinct/city, then state/country and then - the Earth. Step by step
imagine object with bigger volume. And don't stop -- Solar system and then
Galaxy. Then relax and try to combine feeling ALL the objects surrounding you.

5) [Super-deconcentration] So, when you did all 4 exercises many times, spent
many days practicing it – combine them. You have 4 dimensions: vision, sounds,
your body and space around it (somebody would add smelling as well) – so you
can do deconcentration in ALL of them achieving very special state of mind and
body. It's interesting.

And this very thing helps you achieve better results in freediving. Or
searching objects in wide areas.

That's what I've learned from Natalia Molchanova during her training courses.

The interesting part of it: once you achieve good results doing such
techniques (first of all, #1 & #2 combined), you will be able to drive not
slower as usually, but with better ability to notice any dangerous object.

~~~
agumonkey
As a drummer wannabee I spend most of my time trying to keep focused on my
deconcentration. It's the simplest definition of flow or zen I can think of.

------
shorttime
I'm surprised that she did not have a diving buddy. All of the training I've
had with water diving, scuba or freediving, always recommends to have a buddy.
The freediving buddy typically waits on top, looking down, to see if the diver
has issues. If any issues are encountered, this buddy can potentially save the
divers life.

~~~
fabrice_d
We don't know what happened to her exactly, but if she had an issue while
being still deep (more than 20m) that would have been very hard to spot for a
buddy, and even harder to do a rescue. She was not alone by the way.

The only way this could have been totally safe would be to dive along a line,
using a lanyard to not drift away. This is the setup used in all competition
or deep training and this has prevented many casualties.

~~~
abandonliberty
Still speculative, the original article mentions a lack of spotters and an io9
article mentions a depth of 30-40m.

For her this was child's play: freediving gets exponentially harder the deeper
you go. She could've decided to go exploring a bit on the bottom - at that
shallow depth she'd have 2+ minutes of bottom time.

With ~5 days of training, a person can get to 30-40m. Then it becomes harder
(e.g. the air in your lungs gets squeezed to a smaller volume than a complete
and total exhale)

[http://io9.com/well-probably-never-know-what-happened-to-
fre...](http://io9.com/well-probably-never-know-what-happened-to-freediver-
nat-1722730731)

------
Gys
Reminds me of a great movie about two competing free divers: The Big Blue (Le
Grand Bleu)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095250/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095250/)

It also has a sad ending...

~~~
patkob
thanks for the spoiler!

~~~
dublinben
I would argue it actually has a happy ending. It's not a spoiler really.

~~~
smoyer
Two competing opinions ... a sad ending and a happy ending. I'm going to play
it safe and say that it has an ending.

~~~
soci
As a freediver myself, I dit not like THE ending ;)

~~~
pferde
The murderer is the gardener.

------
ChicagoBoy11
Reminded me of Audrey Mestre's tragic accident/homicide?

ESPN's movie on it is incredible:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tqLPwJHMM4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tqLPwJHMM4)

------
doug1001
i had no idea about free diving until i read the OP. Natalia, the subject, who
was one of the handful of world elites, and had been for many years, had a
couple of years before (2013) descended to a depth of 418 feet, and ascended
back to the surface under her own power--no supplemental oxygen, used at
anytime. Absolutely amazing. I had no idea humans could do that--with or
without training.

------
danielyaa5
I feel like this would not hand cracks or bumps well...

