Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Nicoletta Pedrana
(Video)
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!
Alessia Zecchini, Italy. Constant weight, 107 meters,
Three minutes and 45 seconds, world record attempt.
(Cheers)
20 meters.
30 meters.
40 meters.
50 meters.
60 meters.
70 meters.
80 meters.
90 meters.
100 meters.
Touch down!
(Cheers)
(Music)
[Alessia Zecchini - 107m - Record Mondiale Dans Blue Hole, Bahamas - 26/07/18]
(Applause)
When people ask me why I love freediving, I have three words in mind:
depth, challenge and excitement.
But there's much more to freediving for me.
Think about it: we often find ourselves at the edge of a dichotomy.
Surface-depth; easy-challenging; boring-exciting.
In my life, I chose the second part of these verbal dualisms.
words that unleash my energy, my happiness, my passion
and the passion in each and everyone of us.
Melissa Cardon dedicated 10 years of her life
elaborating a new definition of passion:
“A strong positive feeling you experience for something
that's deeply meaningful for you as an individual”.
Ever thought about it?
When you're passionate for something,
you can’t help but thinking about it, working on it, talking about it.
That's not something ephemeral.
It's very deep, it speaks to the heart of your identity.
My passion is freediving - who would have thought?
Do you remember the first time that you held your breath?
Or the first time you took the plunge into the sea,
in the Indian Ocean - Maldives, for the luckiest ones?
We deeply love water,
it's part of us, it's an ancestral memory we find ourselves in.
Sometimes we forget
we came into this world in water,
our very first element:
and above all, by holding our breath.
Perhaps, I was moved by this very ancestral memory,
that pushed me toward an utmost need for depth and silence.
The moment I realised, freediving would become my life,
it was on a torrid day in June 2009.
I was 16 years old,
I had been freediving for a little more than two years.
I was in Rhodes, Greece,
ready to try out a new discipline, called Skandalopetra,
which I had only read about during my studies on freediving history.
I was preparing to dive
in the style of the Greek sponge fishermen.
Much like Haggi Satti famously did in 1913,
when he retrieved the anchor
of the Italian Navy fleet's Regina Margherita Battleship,
stuck 80 meters below the sea level.
Herbert Nitch was there with me.
He's the deepest freediver ever - 214 meters below the sea level.
in the no limits discipline,
In this discipline the freediver dives with a mechanical slide.
At that time, he held every record in all existing freediving disciplines.
I think there's no need to point out the joy and emotions I felt,
when they told me he'd also be there those days,
busy as he was in a movie set of his records.
Now, let’s try to visualise that very moment together.
I know it's a once-in-a-lifetime feeling.
I am on the platform…
I only have the breeze
and the boundless sea around me, helping me to control my excitement.
I already hold the stone, it's six, seven kilos of weight.
I breath.
I breath slowly.
I am ready.
I dive.
The first few meters pass rapidly, the water compresses my body;
it quickly goes through my hair, brushing my closed eyes.
Suddenly, I feel like a burst of frost,
it hits me almost by surprise.
That means I have already reached -30m,
I'm over the thermocline.
The time has come for me to relax again;
I must keep my concentration on the little things,
such as the water flowing on me.
I want to reach my maximum depth.
The focus on equalisation never ceases.
Would you like to try this together?
Try squeezing your nose and push a small quantity of air;
you will hear like a “click” inside your ears.
This is what I do when I freedive.
Let’s get back to where we were
Only a few seconds seemingly passed:
the line stops, I already reached the bottom.
I am at -52,3 meter depth: the world record was -53m,
but I wasn't supposed to reach it, as I still was under age.
After two seconds I felt pulled,
I hold the line, trying to smooth as much friction as possible
and let the line bring me back to the light.
I leave it near the surface,
and I let the water push me back to the surface.
and I breathe.
That day marked a milestone in my life.
A day when an inner flame sparkled within me forever
and pushed me until today.
Why am I telling you all this?
Because during this journey
I realised, we all have an extraordinary power.
We have the power to control our minds,
in order to overcome life's challenges – in sport or other areas.
How do I mean it?
In my case, it is about reaching unprecedented depths.
What did help me in these years?
I often experienced in the swimming pool
my ability to completely detach from the surrounding environment,
laser-focused on the technique,
hence entering the so-called “flow state”.
According to Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi,
seven different conditions seem to occur
during a flow experience.
One is so concentrated,
which leads to an ecstatic feeling, once it has been embraced.
you're always fully aware of your current intention.
There's an immediate response.
You feel like your goal is doable, although hard.
The sense of time is lost, you forget about yourself
and you feel a part of something much bigger.
When you're in these conditions, you enjoy the experience to the fullest.
While learning how to dive deeper in the ocean,
I have experienced an ever-growing self-knowledge,
about both my body and my mind.
One of the most useful techniques, which helped me to reach my goal,
is definitely the positive visualization.
How do I mean it?
I visualise my whole upcoming performance,
starting from the last breath all the way up to the final celebration,
going through each movement and feeling I will perform and experience
Now, you may be asking yourself:
Is it really needed to dive up to -107m to discover all this?
Clearly not…
Every day we have the power to make our own time,
in order to regenerate, focus and train, with the objective
of giving direction to our own life, and follow our individual passion.
Thank you.
(Applause)