🇧🇬 Results – AIDA Individual Freediving Pool World Championships 2022 – Burgas, Bulgaria

For the 28th World Championship, organizers chose a modern and recently-built pool, the Park Arena OZK, which was constructed in 2019. This pool provides the most favorable conditions for athletes with its spaciousness (10 lanes that are 50m/164ft in length) and warm, but not hot, water temperature (26°C/79°F).

Therefore, athletes are able to perform at consistently high levels, setting new personal bests (PBs) and national records.

At the beginning of the day, Petar Klovar of Croatia performed a very strong and clean 251m (823ft) dive, setting the bar very high for a gold medal. Petar’s dive remained the top performance of the day until the last two heats, where his teammate David Čustić and French athlete Guillaume Bourdila later took the stage. David had not participated in official competitions as of late due to his suspension for doping; therefore, no one knew for sure what shape the athlete would be in now. But he appeared to be as strong as ever, confidently performing a 265m (869ft) dive.

Guillaume Bourdila, a very experienced athlete, performed the same dive. In the absence of the current AIDA World Record holder in DYNB, Mateusz Malina (290m/951ft), Guillaume was the main favorite for the gold medal. In theory, David and Guillaume could have shared first place, but not this time.

After several rounds of protests and reviews of the dive footage, David Čustić was given a red card and disqualified for performing the surface protocol in the wrong order. Guillaume’s white card performance was also put into question and his title of AIDA World Champion has been rescinded due to a yellow card given for his turns. On each of his turns, Guillaume placed his hand on the bottom of the pool and not on the pool wall, which resulted in a 5-point deduction for each turn, totaling -20 points in penalties. Therefore, the male DYNB pedestal turned out to be very unexpected. Petar Klovar became AIDA World Champion in DYNB for his performance of 250m (820ft) and Yueh Shiang Hsu of Chinese Taipei as Vice-Champion. Yueh Shiang Hsu performed a solid dive of 240m (787ft) and also set a new AIDA National Record in DYNB. The bronze medal eventually went to Polish athlete Karol Karcz with his performance of 210m (689ft).

However, there was an intrigue surrounding who would claim the silver and bronze medals. Several athletes had very close results, however, we are happy to see Kateryna Sadurska from Ukraine become the AIDA Vice-Champion in DYNB! Despite all of the difficulties and war in her country, Kateryna not only managed to prepare for the Championship in Dahab, Egypt, but also managed to perform at such a high level. Kateryna is an experienced athlete- she came into freediving in 2017 from a background of synchronized swimming and even participated in the Olympic games. This is her first medal from a world championship event. Congratulations, Kateryna, on your well-deserved silver medal!

After Yasuko Ozeki – the AIDA National Record holder in DYNB of Japan – received a red card for her performance of 209m/686ft (the athlete did not successfully perform surface protocol), the bronze medal went to Lidija Lijić of Croatia. Lidia has been a competitive athlete for about 17 years and has been participating in AIDA competitions since 2005, attending her first AIDA World Championship in 2007. During this time, Lidia managed to set 5 world records and still continues to improve her PBs and win medals! Congratulations, Lidia!

We named only the winners, but in total today, 98 freedivers made the attempt to swim as far as possible in one breath with bifins. We hope all of the athletes, safeties, and judges had plenty of rest and recovery time after the first competition day. Today, athletes will be competing in an even more challenging discipline – Dynamic Without Fins.

The last competition day ended with a ceremony for all the winners in the 4 disciplines. Natalia Molchanova Awards were given to the overall winner for men Karol Karcz and for the overall winner for women Magdalena Solich-Talanda.

The 28th AIDA World Competition will remain in the history of freediving with improvement of 2 world records and multiple national and continental records.