14 Jun Records Drop in new BiFins Discipline
As of January, 2019, AIDA International has a new category for the competitive freediving disciplines: Bi FIns; designated CWTB for depth and DYNB for pool. Unlike the original category CWT, where the athlete can choose to wear a monofin, bifins or even no fins, with a propulsion style of their preference, the new discipline only allows for bifins and the standard scissor kick; no dolphin kick permitted.
Since the standard for CWT is a monofin, the depths athletes reach in this category is the deepest in the self-propelled disciplines. With bin fins, athletes won’t reach the same depths, thus a minimum depth for record status has been set by AIDA: 75% of the record depth in CWT.
For the US, the minimum record depth was:
CWTB Women: 64m (Shell Eisenberg 85m CWT)
CWTB Men: 77m (Daniel Koval 102m CWT)
DYNB Women: 138m (Claire Paris 184m DYN)
DYNB Men: 156m (Tom Gilmore 208m DYN)
In March, 2019, the first ever National Record in this category was set by Adrian Gjurasic at the Singapore Freediving Pool Open with a swim distance of 158m. Adrian, a US Citizen who is currently living in Singapore, is a new freediver who was very pleasantly surprised to realize that he had set a National Record at his second competition to date.
In April, 2019, at the Xibalba Freediving Competition in Yucatan, Mexico, the depth records were set.
The first ever US National Record for CWTB was earned by Kristin Kuba of Hawaii. Her dive to 65m on April 24th was the beginning of a record avalanche. Immediately following Kristin’s dive, Enchante Gallardo of Hawaii took it a little deeper to 66m.
The following day Enchante improved her record to 69m, which was matched by fellow Hawaii diver Elijah Aasand.
Both divers, wisely, gradually increased their depth over the course of the competition. 72m then 75m, which gave Enchante Gallardo her 4th National Record. Elijah had to dive at least 2 meters deeper to hit the men’s record.
On April 28th Elijah Aasand earned the first ever Men’s National Record in CWTB with a clean dive to 78m.
Both Enchante and Elijah had consistently smooth and seemingly easy surface protocols, which is a good sign that they have the potential for deeper dives in this discipline.
Both athletes are attending the Caribbean Cup in August, 2019, where we might just see some new records from them.
The women’s National Record has since been broken by North Carolina/ Sailboat resident Ashley Futral Chapman . The current record holder in the NoFIns and CWT depth discipline, Ashley spends a lot of time in bifins, training students, but had never used bifins in competitions until now.
On May 18th, 2019, Ashley Chapman took Enchante’s record 1 meter deeper to 76m/ 249 ft.
Then on June 10th, 2019, Kurt Chambers of Hawaii, who is well acquainted with the records board, broke the CWTB Men’s record with an impressive dive to 96m.
In 6 months, since the inception of this new discipline, US athletes set 8 National Records in bifins.
The women’s NR slot in the pool discipline is still open. In October, the South Florida Apnea Challenge, which is also in consideration to host US Nationals, will hold its annual pool event; a good opportunity for someone to earn the first DYNB Women’s Record.
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