INTO THE GREAT WIDE OCEAN
Nina McGowan is reaching new depths in her quest to conquer the world of freediving
THERE are mornings when Nina McGowan wakes up, sees her gold medal and wonders at how crazy the past 18 months have been. She turned 50 earlier this year and, like most people, was feeling a little funny about that particular milestone. To mark it, she went out and became a world champion – and a world record holder, to boot.
‘I was going to be 50, so I wanted to do something. It was like, what did I get for my 50th birthday? A world record!’ she says with a laugh on a rainy autumn afternoon as life on Capel Street wanders by. ‘It seems outrageous to say that I could be world champion at 50, but the whole idea of turning 50 was outrageous to me, too.’
The story of how McGowan has immersed herself in the world of freediving is even a little outlandish. Despite a background in scuba diving (she once worked as a tour guide around shipwrecks in Cyprus), she only discovered the sport on a trip to Egypt and now, here she sits as one of a handful of
Freediving isn’t about pumping yourself up, it’s about winding down
people who are listed as a world record holder.
McGowan was named after Marinina, who according to Italian mythology was a sea fairy who used to drive white horses from the shore. She grew up in the old harbour-master’s house in Balbriggan and spent her childhood playing and swimming around old wrecks.
‘So, you have to ask yourself is it nature or nurture? Am I following a script? Maybe there is something pre-ordained in all of this,’ she smiles at one point. The sea has always been important to McGowan, it has inspired a lot of artwork. And she feels that there is something in freediving that combines the art world with the spirit of competitive sport.
‘Freediving is considered an extreme sport and an adrenalin sport, but it is the complete opposite. It is not about pumping yourself up, it is about winding down, calming the nervous system and trusting the body. And the older you get, the more you trust the body,’ McGowan explains.
‘And that is what interested me about freediving, the mental focus that it sharpened and how you can lose yourself in this open blue space and completely reset your mind. Freedivers say when they go down, they are saying hello to the sea. It is about releasing yourself in this unknown space. And when I am hanging on a line 30 metres down, I hear nothing, I see nothing, don’t see the bottom, don’t see the top, so you get a mental reset away from all the stimulation of everyday life.’
But freediving is also a sport – and it’s considered one of the most challenging in the world.
A diver descends vertically into deep water on a single breath, using only muscle strength to propel them down. With every metre they drop, the pressure on the body increases. By the time a diver descends 30 metres, it is estimated that the pressure on the body is four times greater than at the surface.
When a diver comes up to the surface, they have to satisfy the judges that they haven’t suffered a surface blackout or what is called in the sport, LMC (Loss of Motor Control). ‘When you come up, you have to hold your chin above the water while you are eyeballing the judge. If the chin goes under the water, the dive is disqualified,’ McGowan explains.
It takes time, occasionally years, to progress in the sport but while in Dahab in Egypt, the mecca of the sport, McGowan realised that she had an aptitude for it. Perhaps it had to do with her affinity for the sea, having been scuba diving, on and off, for more than two decades. And she was a competitive breaststroker when she was younger, so she had that background.
After dipping her toe into the discipline in Dahab. McGowan felt that she wanted to take it a bit more seriously. On the advice of her friend, British diver Ruth Osbourne, she got in touch with Brazilian coach Raphael Vilamiu, an 18-time national record holder who is an icon in the sport.
‘Raf took me under his wing and he is phenomenal. He has a PhD in physics but is on a sabbatical from university teaching. His brain is bats, he is able to evaluate everyone’s capabilities within one coaching session. Last year in Egypt, he said “Nina, you are 49”. I said “yeah” and he just said “you can get a world record in the 50-54 age category”. And that is how it came about. How can you even think about breaking a world record so soon after taking up a sport? But that is how Raf’s brain works. He thinks like that. And once he said it, I was like “f*** it, this is what I will do for my 50th, this will be my gift to myself”. A world record.’
And while she had a bit of an aptitude for the sport, she had to work hard to achieve her goal. There were hours and hours in the Markievicz Pool in Dublin, there were weeks training with Vilamiu and the likes of Fatima Korok, a former synchronised swimmer who is Hungary’s first freediving world champion. She might have come to the sport late, but she found herself in a high performance
environment, ‘With the likes of Fatima, I am training with athletes who are performing at an outrageously high level, that’s the kind of company I am keeping. Even today, we were on the WhatsApp together,’ she says.
And while she has come a long way in a short time,
McGowan reckons she can go even deeper. ‘I know I can do more than 50 metres but I need to practice. I am not out there full-time. I am here, trying to make a living. If you go into competition, you need six to eight weeks of training where that competition takes place.’
It was in Turkey that she finally came good on her coach’s ambition and broke the world record. She had an attempt at an earlier competition in Lanzarote, but bad weather had scuppered those plans with a storm cancelling the event. McGowan had paid for a WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) tester to come from Madrid so that her record would be endorsed, only for Mother Nature to intervene.
And while she quietly insists that she can go much deeper, it is difficult being based in Ireland. The seas around our shores aren’t deep enough to practice freediving, especially as the safety protocols of the sport demand that you are within proximity of a hospital or medical unit.
‘We have systems in place, and that is why it is so hard to train for freediving in Ireland. You can’t just go out to the west coast and hop off a fishing trawler. Before you attempt a free-dive, you need to know where the hospital is, where is the O2 supply, how close are we to shore and how long it would take to go to shore. And you don’t attempt a free-dive without having all of those protocols in place.
‘There is no risk, because you are doing it in a buddy system. If someone is in a deep dive, I will go down and help bring them up from 10 metres down. We all know what to do. It is not like we are out snorkelling
I believe I can go deeper, I have no intention of stopping as long as I can fund it
by ourselves. We make the sport safe by mitigating against any possible problems but because of that, it is too hard to do in Ireland. The water’s too cold for a start and it’s not clear, it is like vegetable soup out there, but also because the water just isn’t deep enough close enough to shore to make it safe. There is a place in Portroe in Tipperary, a quarry that is 40 metres, but I haven’t been down there.’
And she says that it is in competition, when divers are pushing themselves to the very limit, that risks appear. ‘If a diver gets into trouble, it generally happens in competition because that is when people push themselves to their absolute limit.
‘It’s a high-stress situation because you are competing against other divers. Your composure is thwarted and people take a chance and take risk in competition because they want to win and they also have the safety net of safety divers there if anything happens, and they know that.’
Following a whirlwind couple of years, McGowan has no intention of slowing down. There’s a competition in the Philippines early next year where she hopes to break her own record. But it will mean sourcing someone to fund this journey, securing help via Gofundme.
‘I believe I can go deeper, I have no intention of stopping as long as I can fund it. I have come from the art world – where you don’t make any money – to freediving, which doesn’t make any money. But I have stepped on the rollercoaster now and I don’t want to get off.
‘It becomes addictive. When you go under water, you have a moment of awe that lasts with you a lifetime. It is only a couple of seconds you are suspended there but you are in awe of the majesty of nature and feel a part of it. It is just a true feeling of freedom.’
No wonder Nina wants to immerse herself further.