Herbert’s 800ft World record attempt on June 6 reminded a lot of Luc Besson’s “The Big Blue” and specifically Enzo’s last dive. The spectacular Cycladic backdrop (Santorini is just a 10 miles distance from Ios island when the legendary film was filmed) along with a series of bad coincidences that led him to a bad dive and finally to the decompression chamber, played a significant role for that.
Herbert Nitsch is probably the strongest “freediving brain” ever and that along with a super-stamina are responsible for his tremendous-so-far performances including a multiple of World Records and a successful 700ft dive, undoubtedly put him on the top of the competitive freediving community.
This time though as reported, during the last days before the attempt the usual coldblooded and confident Austrian seemed rather stressed. Additionally, the last day before the dive the weather changed to a strong SW, something that forced the team to change the selected location where Herbert had done most of his preparation. The day of the dive with Herbert already aboard, it took his crew more than three hours and three different locations to secure the anchor at a convenient location for the dive. Consequently Herbert started his preparation two hours later, under a burning sun that probably caused him a significant dehydration. Spoken so, he seemed unusually nervous and spend a lot of time in the warm up rope. Despites all those, magnificent Herbert decided to go for it.
His dive ended four minutes and twenty seconds later when the especially designed emergency high speed winch brought him back on the surface, a fact that probably had caused bends. Even being in a very bad condition Herbert was fully conscious of his situation. He grabbed the oxygen supply regulator and dived again at a depth of 10m where he had stayed for almost half hour. That also didn’t help him a lot, so he surfaced and asked for the emergency boat.
He is currently in I.C.U. of the Nautical hospital of Athens and soon we will have more updates about his condition and for the reasons that caused the failure of his attempt. Till then, we wish him to be back again soon, fully recovered, at the place that he adores the most: the Big, Deep Blue. Herbert, 1000ft are waiting!
Stay tuned.