Mandy-Rae Sets Women's Static Apnea Record
On May 29th, 2002 in Vancouver, Canada, Mandy-Rae Cruickshank became both
the 'deepest' and 'longest' woman in the world of competitive freediving
after performing a record setting breath-hold time of 6 minutes and
16 seconds in the discipline of static apnea.
Static apnea or simple breath-hold is overall time performed at the waters surface on one breath of air, without the aid of oxygenated breathing mixtures. Involving intense mental focus and preparation, Static Apnea also requires adaptation of the body's physiology to the extreme duration one must go without breathing. The women's static apnea record was previously held by Karoline Dal Toe, of Brazil at 6:13 in June of 2001.
In September of 2001, in waters off the Cayman Islands, Mandy-Rae set the new bench-mark for overall depth in the women's No-Limits discipline by riding a weighted sled to a depth of 136 meters / 447 feet and ascending with the aid of an inflated air-bag in 2-minutes 24-seconds. In February of this year Mandy-Rae, her coach and trainer Kirk Krack, and two-time world record holder teammate Martin Stepanek, turned their focus to training for an attempt at the static apnea record.
Mandy-Rae's two previous attempts in the week prior were unsuccessful
due to sickness.
Then, with media, friends and well-wishers
looking on she set the new world record of 6:16 under the scrutiny of Judges
from the Association for the International Development of Apnea (AIDA), the
world governing body for competitive freediving.
The AIDA judges flew in from Europe to
officiate the attempt and afterwards administer an IOC level anti-doping
test to insure the validity of the attempt.
Mandy-Rae has been a competitor in the sport of Freediving or breath-hold diving since her introduction to the sport by trainer and coach Kirk Krack in February of 2000. This past October she competed for the Canadian women's Team which recently placed first at the AIDA World Championships in Ibiza, Spain this past October. Mandy-Rae has also been helping co-teach a 12-week scientific freediving research project with Kirk and Team Canada member Tom Lightfoot in conjunction with Dr. Erik Seedhouse and Dr. Andrew Blaber of the School of Kinesiology at Simon Fraser University.
Mandy-Rae lives in Vancouver, Canada where she is the manager of Rowand's Reef Scuba Shop. She also teaches freediving programs throughout North America with Performance Freediving.
