Skolnick - One breath: death, freediving, and the quest to shatter human limits

The warm Atlantic sloshed in Nicholas Mevolis ears as he floated into the competition zone at Deans Blue Hole. He looked calm, but appearances can be deceiving. When Vertical Blue kicked off he had ambitions for a bronze medal and two more American records. Yet after a year of intense preparation and winning an overall gold in another competition only weeks earlier, plus silver at the world championship a month before that, hed proceeded to flub every single dive that week. This was the Wimbledon of freediving. Aside from worlds, it was the only competition that mattered to him, and most others in the sport, and Nick was out of juice. Every muscle in his body hurt. Even his lungs hurt, but he wasnt about to give up. It was game day, and he was preparing to descend to 72 meters, or 240 feet, and back on a single breath.

Six minutes! announced Sam Trubridge, a theater director from Auckland, New Zealand, and the older brother of William Trubridge, the greatest freediver of them all. Standing on the platform, Sam loomed over Nick, who lay on his back, clipped to the competition line. His eyes stayed mostly closed, but when he opened them they flashed with focus and determination.

The competition zone was delineated by a set of white PVC pipes that formed a 6-meter square within the dark blue of the hole. Inside were a photographer, a videographer, and three judges, including lead judge Grant Graves, one of the longest-tenured professionals in the sport. Also within the zone were five safety divers clad in long bi-fins, led by Nicks friend, Ren Chapman, a former college baseball star from Wilmington, North Carolina. It was the safety divers job to meet the athletes once they reached a depth of 30 meters while ascending from their dive. Thats where pressure underwater shifts, and where lactic acid buildup and hypoxia (lack of oxygen) can begin to cause problems.

Clinging to the floating boundaries were a handful of fans and several of Nicks rivals. Folks like Mike Board, forty-four, the UK record holder and a former Royal Marine. Half-Chinese, half-English, six feet tall and all muscle, Mike patrolled the infamous Baghdad Airport Road as a private military contractor during the Iraq War, and earned good money dodging suicide attacks and ferrying high-dollar clients to the safety of the Green Zone. Afterward, he used his earnings to build a flourishing freedive center in Indonesias Gili Islands, which enabled him to train year round. In terms of global standing within the sport, Mike and Nick were among the elite national record holders, and both hoped to be contending for world records soon. Also in the water was Junko Kitahama, another national record holder from Japan. She watched him carefully. Their conversation on the beach had thrown her and she was worried.

Five minutes!

So were his friends and family. They were aware that Nick was hurting, and they also knew that when others took breaks, he doubled down on training. While many kept a less ambitious competition schedule, Nick Mevoli took every opportunity to dive. Thats what made him the best American freediver in less than two years of competition. But mulling past victories wasnt going to help him now. Frustrated, he clenched his eyes tight to silence his brainspeak, to switch off and calm down. He took a cleansing breath and leaned back, submerging his face, stimulating the nerves around his eyes, and sparking the mammalian dive reflex, a physiological response that, if developed, helped an average man become Aquaman, capable of freediving to unheard of depths for minutes at a time, without feeling any anxiety or the slightest urge to breathe.

Four minutes!

He inhaled long and slow and exhaled twice as slow, twice as calm. Each time purging his system of negativity and carbon dioxide, the buildup of which spurs that urge to breathe and can turn a relaxed, peaceful adventure into excruciating toil. If a stray bolt of fear bloomed in his mind, hed slow his breath down even more. That was the only way to lower his heart rate, and keep his demons at bay.

Three minutes!

He knew them well, his demons. Theyd trailed him his entire life. They fueled him. His broken home, his feelings of inadequacy, his frustration with a society attuned to greed and waste, were what drove him into the water in the first place. They also blessed him with uncommon generosity. On land, Nick wasnt the fierce competitor he was on the line, and beneath all of that anxiety, pain and loss, brainchatter and seawater sloshing in his ears, he knew something else, too: he had one more dive left in him, and he was going to tear that Velcro tag from the bottom plate, come up clean, and claim his record.

Two minutes!

He visualized the dive. Something his friend, William Trubridge, a fifteen-time world record holder and owner of Vertical Blue, taught him when theyd roomed together during the Caribbean Cup in Honduras the previous May, where Nick made the dive of his life and became the first American to swim to 100 meters on a single breath. He used a monofin that day. On Sunday, November 17, he would dive without fins, which ratcheted up the difficulty several degrees. Will stood on the beach, barefoot as usual, watching Nick breathe up. Typically he stayed away from the hole when he wasnt diving, but he didnt miss Nicks dives. Nobody in the history of the sport had gotten to 100 meters so fast, and Will knew he was witnessing someone special, someone capable of breaking world records one day and going deeper than any human had before.

One minute!

As the clock ticked below thirty seconds, Nicks breathing pattern changed and he began sipping the air, attempting to fill his lungs to the limitfrom the depth of his diaphragm to those little-used air pockets between and behind the shoulder bladesand in so doing, pack as much oxygen into his system as possible. He would need it. If all went according to plan, he wouldnt breathe again for nearly three minutes.

DEANS BLUE HOLE bloomed onto the freediving scene in 2005 when Will began living and training there. At the time he was not yet a champion, but an aspirant frustrated by the lack of accessibility to deep water and good conditions on a consistent basis. He found both on Long Island, Bahamas, and within a few short years, he became one of the best, if not the best freediver on earth. Freedivers soon flocked to train alongside him, and those that were instructors brought students. Thats how Nick found it in 2012, when he was about to come out of nowhere to break his first American record.