Of course, this is tragic, and I don’t intend to mock the death of Nicholas Mevoli:
A Deep-Water Diver From Brooklyn Dies After Trying for a Record – NYTimes.com.
What I will say is that, to me, free diving is the least attractive human activity possible, save for, perhaps, those performed by those Russians who dangle from things.
I think I understand the allure of challenging yourself–of doing something just to test your endurance. Let’s just say that the idea of going into the dark depths of the sea, where your body does its damnedest to replace the air in your lungs with briney death, is not my idea of a sport. (The governing body fascinates me.)
He died of a pulmonary edema, the Times says:
Still, Mevoli shot to the surface under his own power, after a dive of 3 minutes 38 seconds. That’s when the scene turned nightmarish.
Mevoli ripped off his goggles, flashed the O.K. sign and attempted to complete the surface protocol that would make his attempt official by saying, “I am O.K.†But he wasn’t. His words were garbled, his eyes wide and blank. He tipped backward into the ocean and lost consciousness, which, while alarming, is not unheard-of in a sport in which almost all the top athletes have lost consciousness at one time or another, though usually for only a few seconds. Mevoli was not so fortunate.
Five safety divers, one of them an Australian paramedic and all certified in life support techniques, hefted him onto a nearby platform, where the event physician, Barbara Jeschke of Germany, went to work trying to revive him.
“There’s a problem with his lung,†shouted Marco Cosentino of Italy, one of the safety divers who meet the competitors at various stages to help bring them to the surface if they are in distress. They turned Mevoli onto his side, and blood began pouring from his mouth and pooling on the platform before dissipating into the sea.