Nimes sets new competition standards

Nimes, south of France, is a nice town, well known for its corridas and ferias.

But, this week-end was 100% freediving oriented with an already well known competition. with more than 70 athletes participating, Nimes is surely the biggest competition in the french freediving calendar this year.

The pool is huge, providing a 50m olympic pool (perfect for the dynamic with fins), 25m wide (perfect for the no fins) and a static dedicated pool.

This environment is simply perfect for performances. Combined with a very good organization, this event was a great success, announcing possibilities for even bigger events. Well done SCPL (Nimes's freediving club) !

The level of competitors present was high, with all the AIDA french representants present 'in force'. This Nimes competition was 'the' french indoor meeting of the year, with no doubt !
 

The first event, static, started the competition with nice performances :

with 7 persons over 6' (Pradon Jean-Michel 06:43, Charras christian 06:34, Poggi Patrick 06:31, Jérôme CHAPELLE 06:26, Guillaume Néry 06:26, Morgan Bourc his 06:02) and one over 7' (Christian Maldamé  07:01), the level was set up high for the next disciplines to come.
 

The final podium was staying open for at least 10 freedivers...
 

For the women, Francine goes over 5 minutes with 5'12'', things are getting serious for her :-)
 

The next discipline, dynamic with fins, was announcing good performances to come.

And it came...

I was finally the 'lucky' winner of the day with a very nice 200m Personal Best, allowing me to take the first place of the final ranking. Just behind, Morgan, Christian and Fabry were not far, doing very serious performances.
 

The 6 best performances of the DYN are listed here :

1 Christian Maldamé 200m

2 Morgan Bourc his  175m

3 charras christian 156m

4 Fabry Mathieu     150m

5 Guillaume Néry    143m

6 Frank Caillet    136m
 

On the Women side, Alice sets-up new standards reaching a very nice distance of 150m (equals the french national record) and win this discipline easily. Francine follows with a nice PB of 124m, with a new fin, Well done Francine ! But it was not enough to win the final ranking of the competition that Alice secured with her impressive 150m.

In option, a limited number of athletes (20) could do a performance in DNF, not accounted for the final ranking.

Men and women offered a nice show. I noted a nice 'head to head' between Guillaume and Morgan. In the end, Morgan won this contest with an over 128m swimm. Well done Morgan !

 Video : The champions heat (DNF) : M. Bourchis (128m) Vs G. Nery (DSQ-SP)

In the end of the DNF, Cyril offered us a nice show of 'how to secure a protocol in Samba' making all of us laugh... 

The final ranking gives :

Women
1. Alice, Modolo

2. KREISS, Francine

3. Florence, Chepetkine

Men

1 Maldamé, Christian

2 Bourc his, Morgan

3 christian, charras

4 Néry, Guillaume

5 Jean-Michel, Pradon

6 Thomé, Fabrice
 

We could note, the 'come back' of 2 strong freedivers of the french freediving circuit : Christian Charras and Jean-Michel Pradon. Coming back after 2-3 years break (at least). They are still very fit and able to fight for the podium, congratulations...
 

Detailed results can be found here :

http://www.freedivecentral.com/a-results.php?num_competicao=63
 

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