Ben Gowland

I began breath hold diving at an early age, sitting on the bottom of swimming pools with little understanding of what I was doing or why I was doing it. My parents thought little of it as I didn't stay down for particularly long, nor go very deep. I did, however, manage to get my first proper mask squeeze at about the age of 7 from diving down to 3m without equalising!

At about the age of 10, I foolishly tried to 'reinvent' the aqualung using a bit of hose-pipe and two 2-litre coke bottles. Needless to say this apparatus was not a success, and pushed me back toward breath hold diving instead.

Several years of holiday snorkelling followed until I was about 17, and discovered (and could fit) my Dad's old 7mm wetsuit and fins. Soon I was freediving to the bottom of the local sand quarries in Cheshire and diving the north & west coasts of Wales. By the end of one years diving, I got so enamoured with this new sport that I bought myself a full set of modern snorkelling equipment and enjoyed more local diving and a fine 2 weeks of diving on the south coast of Cornwall.

I then went to University and learnt to play underwater hockey, which developed my breath holding skills and water confidence massively. I learnt to Scuba dive whilst keeping my hand in on breath holding. The occassional static breathold out of curiosity eventually developed into an interest in competitive freediving in 1998 when the first UK team was formed. I was invited to the SETT tank in Portsmouth where I jumped in and swam to the bottom; discovering that the sport of freediving was easier than it looked.

After the 2000 UK championships I was invited to join the UK team in Nice, France at the world cup and set a new PB and unofficial UK record in constant weight at 52m. I then came home with the intention of training for the next year to go and set a new official UK record in constant weight (the record then was 50m). A year later at the next world championships I set a new UK record at 61m, which was more or less as deep as I could go due to equalising ability. By 'accident' I also set a UK record in static apnea with 5:17. Which was a suprise, since I wasn't interested in static apnea, never have been, nor ever will be. This was probably the last static I ever did!

At this point I 'retired' from competitive freediving to focus on teaching Fiona (my wife) to freedive along with setting up a training system and safety procedures for freediving in the UK. Fiona turned out to be much better at freediving than me, although not inclined to compete. This helped me distance myself from the competition side of the UK freediving scene, and eventually the organisational side. I have been sitting in the background of UK freediving since 2003 and help out when and if necessary.

There is one element of modern day freediving that I have great interest in - FRC / Exhale diving, where one dives with relatively empty lungs rather than the norm of as full lungs as possible. I became very interested in this concept in early 2003 and have been diving almost exclusively with this method since. I rapidly became a convert both due to the theory and my own experiences. Diving in this way has very much given me a new lease of life in freediving and has reverted me back to 'grass-roots' freediving where enjoyment is the key. I now dive and spearfish when I fancy with very little emphasis on time/depth and much more emphasis on relaxing, videoing and catching food.