TRIPLE DEPTH - BEHIND THE SCENES

Ok, so this will be the last thing i'm writing about Triple Depth 2008, because we are all tired and we feel it's time to move on with our lives.

Lotta and I are going to be very busy during the next few weeks, with an Instructor Course starting tomorrow, and soon after we'll fly to Nice to be the judges for Guillame Nery WR attempt.

Hopefully the rest of July will be a quiet time so we'll have time to rest and sit home in our air con knitting and cooking :-)

But what I'd like to do here now, is to thank all the staff that worked in TD, and try hard to say something nice about each one of them :-)

The safety

Let's start with the lazy Spanish safety, Miguelito and Alex. They weren't lazy because of bad intention, but just because it's written in their spanish genes. This is why we love them anyways.

The only thing i blame Alex for is his bad smoking habit. He smokes way too much, even though he cut to half his original dose, and as punishment he's always being sent out of Aqua Marina restaurant every time he is seen with a fag in his hand. We are going to abuse him more badly during the Instructor Course, so hopefully he will stop completely.

As for Miguel, he is the antipode of punctuality, and this is why i was so surprised to see him arriving in time for his safety shifts. Maybe that's because he was scared of me, remembering those times when, as my student, he was continually screamed after, especially for showing up late in the mornings (every single one!), using as an excuse the fact that he had to cycle against the wind.

As for Patrick, his bigger fault is being French, but since there’s nothing he (or us) can do about that, we decided to accept him as he is. The good thing is that he’s becoming very funny when drunk, especially when mimicking me during the party.

Marco the Rasta is actually even lazier than the Spanish crew. And on top of that he’s so easily distracted by any female presence, to the point where he only wanted to do the safety for the female athletes, and one time I had to do the safety myself for Liv dive, since Patrick missed an equalization and couldn’t go down, and Marco was looking at bikinis swimming about, missing completely the whole thing. Despite this, and the fact that he admittedly doesn’t wash his hair with shampoo since 1998, everybody loves him, and I have to say I miss him very much, because he’s very funny and nice with everybody.

The official surface videograper, and much more

Dean, our Canadian rock climber instructor(the one on the right in the picture) got caught into the freediving business when he fell in love with beautiful Katya, few months ago. Now that it’s to hot to climb he always comes diving with us, and our favorite pastime is to challenge ourselves in races for the faster rope puller at the end of the dive sessions. He still didn’t beat me, but I know he has a pull up bar in his place, and he’s training hard. He’s been working so hard during the competition, and we thank him from the bottom of our hearts, because without him we would have been in deep trouble.

The land coordinator

Peter Ericson, who can be seen standing in Aqua Marina restaurant with a binocular trying to understand what’s going on inside the Pyramid, and informing the athletes when it’s their time for the official warm-up. He’s also the one in charge of being polite with the tourist police anytime they come over (about 10 times a day) and ask the list of the athletes and nationality (yes, it’s the same every day!). Luckily it doesn’t have to be me doing that, because I’m well known for my short fuse, especially when confronted with useless bureaucracy and inefficiency.

The judges

Obviously I’m not going to thank myself, also because I’ve been a bit useless (I got flu 2 days before the comp). I’d like to thank Katya, who was also uselessly sick, but she’s been there, sitting in the sun the whole day in spite of feeling so weak. And thank you Lotta, for taking charge of everything and not making me feel bad about being absent when there was so much to do.

Judge Lotta wearing her Judge uniform

Next one is Judge Katya in her charming hat

This is me being silly, in a shot of Richard.

The drivers

I’m thanking the drivers only out of diplomacy (which as many of you know, is one of my best qualities :-) Thing is that our bright Bedouin driver Mohamed, got married just few days before the comp, and the wife didn’t want to release him from the bridal bed. So the poor guy had to co-ordinate from home some less bright relatives of his, who were often late, or lost, or didn’t understand, and whatnot.

The Scientist

Dr Erika Schagatay has been sitting on the platform taking measurements of every athlete after their performance, to see how hypoxic they were at the end of their dive (for some of them you didn’t need an oxymeter to see that, believe me), and how long they took before getting back to normal levels (some of them will never go back to normal, I suspect). Hopefully all this research will give us more information and open new doors and shed some light on the mysteries of this beautiful hypoxic sport :-)