Start of the 2018 season with a new STA personal record!

The freediving season is slowly starting and the best freedivers in the world are warming up for the upcoming world championship competition.

Matt Malina, Grena® sponsored athlete started out strong with breaking yet another of his records!

Fazza Championships 2018 in Dubai

An early spring competition is the Fazza Championships, which is being held annually in Dubai, UAE to commemorate the country’s ancestors. This year it took place on 23 – 24 March, 2018.

2015 was Matt’s first attempt at the competition  and fromt here he slowly started to adjust his training to suit the rules of the to the competition – very different than the AIDA. To put it simply, it’s a competition in static breath-hold, holding on to a rope without any equipment.

When asked, what motivates him in his journey as a freediver and athlete, Matt always says it’s to surpass his own limits. During this competition, he proved himself right and surpassed his limits with a dive of 10 min and 4 seconds and taking 2nd place in the competition.

First place took the amazing Goran Colak, with incredible 11 minutes 6 seconds and 3rd to Veljano Zanki with 9 min 21 seconds. There was also a 4th person in a party, Branko Petrovic with ~10 minutes 10 seconds but was disqualified due to blackout.

Preparing for Fazza involved a lot of fasting and caloric restriction. Matt started at the Fazza competition weighting 72 kg, which is 14kg (!) less then when he was in his top dynamics shape while setting world records in world championships in 2016. That is a huge change in the body and how it works under water.

About the dive, Matt says:

“The attempt was enjoyable and kind of easy compared to my last year performance. I was pretty surprised. I did my maximum for that day, so I can’t complain about the end result. However I’ve made some mistakes during training phase. I’m already looking forward for next year training.”

All of this wouldn’t be possible without the amazing support of Matt’s wife – Ola, who supported him during the preparations, often sacrificing a lot of time to help Matt train. Not without an importance was the help of Matt’s training partners Karol Karcz and Michal Dabrowski!

Matt also adds:

“I would like to thank my official sponsor Grena LTD for their continuous support!”

We are happy to support you, Matt! And wish you great success in the coming season!

Next stop:

Matt’s next competition will be on home turf in Jaworzno, Poland on May 12th and in the Czech Republic the following week. The next Championship competition will be in less than 3 months at the AIDA Individual Pool World Championships. The event will be held from June 23 to July 1, 2018 in Belgrade, Serbia.

Bonus: Matt talks at an TEDx event

Matt will talk at a local TEDxWSB event in Wroclaw, Poland on Tuesday, pril 24th at 10:20 AM about Freediving and how to manage your emotions. The talk will be in Polish, but let’s hope for some English subtitles coming soon!
You can watch the stream here: https://www.facebook.com/WSBwroclaw/