My first competition...

... was the 7th Berlin Master Cup in February 2005 and it was a total disaster.

I was very inexperienced in freediving competitions and had only been safety at two events the previous year. I was quite happy about my training results (STA: 4:02, DYN: 82m) at the time and wanted to show that... It all went wrong.

For static I did not have a coach (mistake #1) and could not understand my count down due to the echo from the loudspeaker. When I entered the competition zone, the safety diver started asking my all kinds of questions that I did not understand by the time. I looked at the judge and asked him how much time I had left. He shrugged and said "two minutes". I was shocked and immediately started to hyper ventilate (mistake #2). Everything then went well until 3'45 when someone turned my lights off. When they were going on again I lay on my back with a O2 mask on my mouth and was looking into quite a number of anxious faces.

Then, between my static and dynamic, I spend 5h getting really, really tired (OT STA: 18:24 - OT DYN 23:05) so I started drinking coffee (mistake #3). When my official top came, I was not really looking forward to the dive any more. I just wanted it to be over. And so I quit after 52m. When the judge gave me the yellow card and told me I was going to get penalty points for not making the 75m I had announced, I was really pissed! I hated competing and I hated AIDA!

It took a long time for me to go back and start again.

I still did not end up on the last place... ;)