One Breath

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by Adam Skolnick


  Kerry nodded, stepped out of the minivan, and saw Nick Mevoli for the first time. He was shirtless, sitting on his patio, reading a book and having an espresso. Despite his lifelong athleticism he’d always looked more regular guy than elite jock. On the street, nobody would ever guess what he could do on a bike or underwater and how much pain he could tolerate, which is why he never failed to surprise, whether it was the Tally crew, a Havana lifeguard, or the production hacks he submarined with his stunts. On Grand Cayman, he looked the part. Thanks to months of training, eliminating smokes and booze, and shifting his diet, the weight had peeled off him. He was superlean, tan, and muscular; his eyes were bright; and his long hair fell around his shoulders. He was thirty years old, and in his prime.

  He set down his coffee, came over, and gave them both a hug. All around they could see athletes milling about the pool and lazing on lounges. Nick threw on his threadbare chambray. There were holes in the denim and he left it unbuttoned as he helped move their gear into the condo next door. Steve and Kerry didn’t know it yet, but that was the only outfit he’d wear for the entire trip.

  That night they had dinner at Nick’s place. He made curry, dipping into his portable potpourri of spices he’d smuggled in from Brooklyn. He got Kerry to chop the tomatoes and Steve to put on the rice. On the stove was Nick’s espresso bubbler—he’d made sure to bring that too, and a can of Lavazza espresso beans. His computer was open, tuned to NPR, and his dive gear was scattered on the floor of the living room. Nick had been in the midst of building another neck weight and a new pair of fluid goggles. He’d been around for only a couple days, but the place felt lived in. To Kerry and Steve, it felt like home.

  The three new friends shared their stories and bonded over the fact that Nick and Steve were both going for records. Nick had seen the Chapmans around, but they hadn’t met officially. He’d heard Ashley was gunning for a world record, so he kept his distance. He didn’t want to disturb her.

  The next day, training began. There were fourteen competitors, all of them connected to PFI, and everyone traveled between the competition pool, the boat dock, and the condo complex in the same minivan. Though they called themselves the Water Tribe, tribal relations weren’t always perfect. Ted and Nick continued to clash. Nick wanted to dive 75 meters on the first day of training. Ted suggested starting with 70 meters. When Nick wanted to push the plate to 85 meters, Ted would only drop it to 80. To make matters worse, Ted was hitting all the same depths as Nick. Nick was starting to think roles had reversed and that he was helping Ted to break Rob’s record, and paying for the privilege besides.

  “You shouldn’t go this deep so casually. You can get squeezed,” Ted said for the umpteenth time.

  “Stop trying to protect me and just coach me.”

  “Trust me, you need reps. Competition dives are a different animal. You have to get a few under your belt, and build up to the record.”

  “I have been building up. I feel good. I’m fresh and I’m ready. I don’t want to wait for the end of a week of serious diving. Isn’t Ashley Chapman going for her world record on day one?”

  Ted and Nick did their best to keep their growing rift private, and often Ted could be heard touting Nick. He told the Chapmans that his athlete was prepared to do some big things at the competition. Privately, however, he was worried, and reacted by focusing on his own preparation. If Nick wouldn’t listen, Ted wouldn’t bother to try. Ted hit 80 meters, then 85 in the run-up to the competition. Nick watched and privately fumed. He didn’t let their conflict cloud his perspective, however. He was there to enjoy himself and it was easy when he was rocking his training dives, cooking with new friends, doing yoga every day, and enjoying island life.

  On May 3, the day before the competition began, photographer Logan Mock-Bunting arrived on the scene to shoot the competition for CNN. Logan had done his training with PFI and knew the Chapmans, so when he arrived he sought out Ren. In addition to helping Ashley prepare for her record attempt, Ren was part of the safety team, and had been spotting divers on training days in the pool and at depth. Logan asked him if he’d noticed anything or anyone interesting. “There’s this one guy who does this tightrope thing on the warm-up line, which is pretty cool,” Ren said. “You’ll definitely want to get pictures of that.”

  Logan had been a late arrival to the competition, and his housing assignment was shuffled. That night Nick, Kerry, and Steve and a few others had been up chatting about deep equalization techniques—brain food for the dive geek—when Logan knocked. “Seems I’m supposed to crash with you guys,” he said. Nick had been rooming with another diver, who took the downstairs bedroom. Nick’s room was upstairs, but instead of feeling put off by a new face and shared quarters the day before his first competitive dive, or haggling with his roommate about who would sleep where, Nick made a unilateral decision.

  “Welcome,” he said. “You’ll stay upstairs with me.” Nick grabbed one of Logan’s camera bags and led him upstairs, where he pulled one of two twin mattresses from a frame and dragged it to the window. The other twin was already made up, right next to Nick’s abandoned frame. “You take that bed.”

  “Sorry about this,” Logan said.

  “No big deal. I always have random friends staying at my place in Brooklyn. There are probably three people there now.”

  “Right, well, I’ve been known to snore a little bit. So, sorry, again.” Nick laughed, and patted Logan on the shoulder.

  “Good, you’ll blend in with the geckos. Come on down when you’re ready, we have plenty of food.” Nick headed downstairs as Logan shook his head and laughed to himself. He’d just met the tightrope walker and didn’t know it.

  The next day, under a patchwork of low-hanging clouds stitched with seams of blue sky, the Water Tribe motored a half mile offshore and set up the Deja Blue competition zone. Unlike Vertical Blue and the Caribbean Cup, Deja Blue didn’t operate from a platform. Its dive rig, built from a Tinkertoy-like carbon fiber frame, was tied to a dry boat that drifted in the mellow current. The dry boat was where athletes would hang out before and after their dives.

  The rig had six lines in total—two competition lines, each hung from a red float, and four warm-up lines on the periphery. During Deja Blue, athletes dive from the deepest depth to shallowest, but world records always take precedence regardless of depth, so on the morning of day one, Ashley was up first. There was one other diver in the water, however. Nick was on a warm-up line, dressed in his silver hooded wetsuit, about 25 meters below. Ashley’s attempt was still 15 minutes away, so Logan kicked over and dove down, just as Nick began tightrope walking up the line. Logan was practically laughing into his viewfinder as he finned closer to get the perfect wide angle.

  Dive lines are vertical, and Nick had spread his arms wide and gone horizontal, clutching the line between his big and first toe, gently using his hands to help propel him up the line one step at a time. It takes tremendous core strength to use only the smallest hand motion and clenched toes to stay face up at that depth. But if it took work, it certainly didn’t show in Logan’s artful images, where Nick, in a field of deep blue, looks to be tiptoeing a line that disappears to nowhere. Later when Logan asked him about his tightrope motivation, Nick said, “I do it to remind myself that this should be fun, that this is something I enjoy doing. It relaxes me.”

  By the time Ashley floated toward the competition line ready to dive to 63 meters without fins, Nick was on the surface to watch an American woman attempt to take the Constant No Fins world record for the first time. She wore a charcoal-gray wetsuit with an American flag stamped on the left shoulder and her name on the back, a pair of blue fluid goggles, and an orange neck weight.

  Though she had completed four straight, clean 65-meter dives in training, there was no guarantee that Ashley would nab the record at 63 meters. For one thing, this was her first world record attempt, plus Ashley hadn’t slept well, and when they had to delay the dive for a few minutes because of problems with
the bottom plate camera, her routine had been trashed. She was nervous when Grant Graves, the lead judge of the event, clipped her to the line, her neck cradled in an inflated horseshoe pillow and her knees resting on a foam noodle. Nerves can be troubling to a freediver because they lead to anxious thoughts. Like muscles, thoughts too demand oxygen, which is one more reason why it’s critical for competitive freedivers to relax deeply and maintain a clear mind before and during a deep dive. Ashley told herself that she would be just fine. Ren was close by, and he would have her back, no matter what.

  Just after the countdown hit zero, ten seconds late but still well within the rules, she flipped onto her stomach, paused for a moment, folded over, and started to swim. Her first six strokes were strong, without much glide in between. When she hit the 10-meter mark, she began gliding for two seconds between strokes, bringing down her heart rate and becoming as efficient as possible. From there she became negatively buoyant and it was time to freefall. Visibility was exceptional and behind her the surface looked a light blue as she fell toward the plate. When her dive computer chimed, she opened her eyes and saw the plate. She grabbed the line, pulled herself close, snagged a tag, then let go to begin swimming up. It would be a slow, steady climb back to life.

  Ren was the first safety to meet her at 30 meters. He flashed three fingers so she knew where she was. The mind can race in a myriad of fruitless directions when underwater for two minutes or more, and the sight of her husband helped chase all bad vibes away. Five strokes later, at 20 meters, he flashed two fingers. Now a second safety was with them. Ten seconds later she was 10 meters from the surface, and she took her time floating up.

  She breached with blue lips, a sure sign of oxygen deprivation, took three hook breaths, and removed her nose clip, then went back to the nose a second time, as if her brain had skipped a beat. Precious seconds ticked away. She had only fifteen seconds to complete protocol and it was obvious she was bumping against hypoxia, confounded by that lag between the time a diver takes her first fresh breath on the surface and when that nourishing oxygen reaches and saturates her brain. Ashley’s fog cleared just in time, and with five seconds to go, she removed her goggles and flashed the okay sign. “I’m okay,” she said, breathless.

  “Tag?” Grant asked. She pulled it from her hood and presented it, her lips still blue, her lungs still heaving, but with each passing second she became more grounded. Her color was coming back and her eyes remained fixed on Grant, alert and waiting. When he offered the white card, everyone cheered. The athletes on the boat, the organizers, the safety divers, and even the judges clapped. Ren kissed his wife and the Water Tribe splashed her with water. Natalia Molchanova had owned the sport since busting onto the scene in 2005, and Ashley Chapman had surpassed her by diving deeper without fins than any woman in the history of the world.

  If athletes have one gripe about Deja Blue, it’s that there isn’t enough depth to attract more world-class talent. Will and Alexey would never compete there because the deepest point is just 92 meters. It’s a family competition for the PFI diaspora, and only Ashley Chapman was truly elite among them. Nick and Ted Harty were still under the radar, and even if one of them got his 91-meter record, the US men would still be a fair distance behind the world’s best divers. In other words, internationally, Ted and Nick were anonymous, but at Deja Blue, they were big hitters. The fact that they were teacher and student, going for virtually the same depth, at the same exact time, only augmented the drama.

  As the countdown hit zero, they both disappeared beneath the rippling surface. Ted was headed to 85 meters. Nick was going for 86. Three minutes later they reappeared, seconds apart. Both had tags in their hand. Both earned white cards, but Nick’s dive was cleaner. A few minutes after reaching the surface he was barely breathing heavy, while Ted coughed and spit bits of blood into his palm. Ted was on oxygen for several minutes before his breathing normalized. Nick had no need for O2, and he knew he had more in him.

  By the numbers the two competitors were virtually tied, but ironically, after all his worrying, it was Ted who got squeezed. His lungs were shot, and from Nick’s perspective, so was his credibility. The next morning, Nick was back on the line with Robert King’s American Constant Weight record in sight, and the entire Water Tribe was on hand to witness his attempt to 91 meters.

  There was a cloud cover, which made it easier to relax. Tropical sun has a way of steaming up a wetsuit, and Nick was in his silver hooded number, his left hand on the red float, and his neck supported by one of those inflatable horseshoe pillows some travelers bring on airplanes. The countdown reached zero and Nick didn’t hesitate. His lungs packed to the limit, he flipped and kicked below, his light blue and black monofin propelling him deep, his arms stretched overhead, and his nose clip ratcheted tight. After about seven swipes with his fin, he eased the throttle, still kicking until he reached 25 meters. Visibility was 40 meters that day and the sea was a field of perfect blue. At 50 meters he knew he was past the point of no return, and said a prayer. “It was then,” he’d write in a blog post for usfreediving.org, “that I completely let go.”

  Mechanically the dive was a mess. He wasn’t streamlined, and his lanyard tugged him sideways, creating drag with his monofin. He was almost perpendicular, falling face first instead of head down when he approached the bottom plate, and his chin was jutted as he stared toward the tags. None of it was textbook, and the atmospheric pressure was so strong—we’re talking 10 ATM, or 10 tons per square foot—he could feel a tickle in his trachea, which was squeezed by the extreme force. It took him a few seconds to snag the tag before he turned and kicked hard toward the light.

  The safety divers met him at 30 meters and again at 20, but he stared through them, his arms still stretched overhead, focusing on one kick at a time. Kirk was among the safeties and he flashed two fingers so Nick knew where he was. At 10 meters, Ren flashed one finger and Nick let his arms fall to his sides. With two more kicks he was at the surface, exhaling along the way. He grabbed the red buoy, took his hook breaths, removed his nose clip, and then his goggles. He flashed the okay sign, and said those three magic words to make it official. Then he produced the tag. Grant Graves flashed a white card.

  “It felt like he was down forever,” Kerry Hollowell said, “and when he came up everyone just erupted. We were all so happy, and he was ecstatic. It was beautiful.”

  There were high fives all around. Ren threw his fist in the air. Everyone wanted a picture with him. If there was any lingering bad blood between Nick and Ted, it certainly doesn’t appear that way in Logan’s photographs, where coach and athlete are shoulder deep in blue water, their arms thrown over one another. Nick had set a goal, and though they’d clashed and competed toward the end, Ted had helped him get there. Back in New York, Meir owed Kelly lunch.

  For the rest of the day, Nick had visitors. Everyone wanted to congratulate the new American beast in the water. Although 91 meters wasn’t exactly elite, his feat made the rounds through the various freedive interweb communities, including Deeper Blue, and even the top divers were impressed that an unknown could get from 30 to 91 meters in just a few months. Nobody had ever heard of that before. It meant that he was a comer.

  Nick made sure to give Ted Harty plenty of credit in his blog post, and he let Meir know what happened in a Facebook chat. A longtime Facebook holdout, Nick’s devotion to a sport with international reach and critical Facebook forums made it impossible to spurn Zuckerberg any longer, but he never gloated about his success on Facebook. Francesca Koe Owings, one of the leaders within the US Freediving Association, did that for him, posting his picture alongside Iru Balic, who had also set a national record with a 42-meter dive in Free Immersion that day. After she took the picture, Francesca chatted Nick up about making the US team for the world championship later that summer. His record dive was a good start, but he’d need a decent showing in the pool to insure his selection. Later that afternoon, Ashley knocked on his door.

  He had h
is computer locked into NPR, as usual, and his espresso bubbler was steaming up a fresh pot on the stove. Ashley had never had much affinity for coffee, but she liked the look of that stained and tarnished relic on his stovetop, and she loved NPR, so after they’d exchanged congratulations, they sat and listened, sipped espresso, and talked. Nick was quiet at first. She found him almost aloof, but not in an elitist way. He seemed a tortured soul, but she enjoyed his company. Their afternoon espresso and NPR summits became a regular thing.

  Later that night, Nick competed in the pool, hitting 83 meters in Dynamic No Fins. He was frustrated by his performance. He’d hoped to make it to 100 meters, and when he didn’t, he let out an enraged rant—the kind Meir had witnessed several times in the pool back in Brooklyn. But Meir always laughed it off, and the lifeguards accepted his apologies without fail. New Yorkers take that kind of thing better than most freedivers, however, and shooting off a geyser of self-directed expletives during a freedive competition is kind of like unleashing a profanity-laced tirade in yoga class. It’s just not done.

  The very next evening he was back in the pool for a Dynamic dive. Again he’d swim for distance, this time with his monofin. He was going for Ted’s American record of 170 meters. In Dynamic, the swim doesn’t get interesting until the athlete makes the turn at 100 meters, and the suspense builds. Ted watched, uneasy, as Nick double kicked and glided in rhythm, made the turn at 125 meters, and had his record in sight, just two lengths away.

  When Nick approached 150 meters, however, the pain had become unbearable. Pressure wasn’t a factor but contractions were. Lactic acid burned and threatened to seize his quads and calves. He managed to make the turn at 150 meters but he couldn’t hold out much longer and came up. He stabilized himself on the pool ledge and went through the protocol. For a rookie, 156 meters was an incredible feat. Just 14 meters off the national record, his performance intrigued the US team all the more, but Nick wasn’t impressed. After the white card came he cursed at himself, his eyes on fire. Disappointment wasn’t the word. Nick was pissed, never mind that he was on track to win the entire competition.

 

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