Q&A: Sara Campbell

The UK's greatest freediver on the secrets of the deep

“The deeper you go, the more the pressure increases but it just feels like a big hug. It's actually very pleasant.” It’s hardly the image most of us conjure up when we imagine ourselves deep below the sea in dark, crushing pressures that turn your lungs to the size of a fist. That would explain why more of us aren’t freedivers like Sara Campbell: athletes who plunge to incredible depths with no more air than they can carry in their bodies. The above quote is how the 37-year-old described the sensations she experienced during her world record dive this April, off the coast of Long Island. Descending to 96m, she regained her title as the greatest female freediver of all time, a feat made more incredible by her brief career: only four years ago, she was a stranger to the sport. WideWorld met up with ‘Mighty Mouse’, a legend in the making, to talk about the depths, the science and the drive to win.

Just how fierce is the competition between rivals?

Very fierce. We have to be. There’s no discipline where one athlete is out there on their own, though the women’s sport was going that way until I came along. Natalia Molchanova held all six world records, and there was a Canadian diver Mandy-Rae Cruikshank who held a few world records over the years. She set the record at 88m, and I gave her a big old shock, particularly because I’d only been doing it for nine months!

That’s a fast rise to the top, Sara. How did an ex-PR from Wandsworth end up a world champ?

I moved to Dahab on the Red Sea about four years ago. I got fed up of London and I fell in love with this place on the sea, so I was there teaching yoga when a student noticed my capacity for breath control – knowing I loved the sea, she suggested I give freediving a go. My flatmate had suffered a lung squeeze doing it, so at first I thought, ‘What a stupid sport, why would I want to do that?’

What’s a lung squeeze?

When you go to a certain depth, your lungs compress so much that you’re no longer able to access the residual air that’s inside them. If you go beyond that level and you force an equalisation, you put pressure on the lung tissue. Fluids surrounding the lungs can get forced across the membrane and into the lungs. Now that I understand freediving I see that it’s actually a part of the sport – a bit like you might pull a muscle while you’re running. I haven’t actually had a lung squeeze – some people have more or less flexible lungs.

So did their injury put you off at first?

I steered away from it for over a year – I’d moved to get out of the competitive rat race! Eventually I thought it was time to give it a go. The course was booked for the day after the bomb attack in Dahab in 2006 [a terrorist attack targeting tourist sites], so it got pushed back while I got involved in support groups, helping survivors and the people who assisted survivors. That got me depressed – I didn’t leave the house for three days, and I was crying all the time. I realised I needed to do something, so my friends and I went diving, and it made me feel much better. I went back the next day, and the day after that, and was completely recovered. I thought ‘Wow, that’s really powerful.’

So diving became a prescription in itself?

I’d had bouts of feeling quite depressed and crappy before, and it takes a long time to get back out of it again. I thought that if it was that simple to be happy, I’m going to keep on diving. That was the thing that motivated me initially: whether it’s the sport itself that I love, or it has an influence on the hormones, I don’t know. But it works.

Did you know you were a natural from the start?

Well, I trained for six or seven weeks and got to 43 metres. In my eyes I was a beginner – my teachers were 75m divers, so 43 was nothing. But then I realised one of the girls who used to be on the British team who had been diving for four years had never been below 37. I applied for the team, but two days later I found out I had hepatitis A, and I was out of any kind of physical activity for six months to a year.

How long did you take to recover?

I stuck it out for seven months, then went for a dive and I felt fine. I would dive and then take a lot of rest. Then I set a national record in my first ever competition dive and I loved it; I loved the high of succeeding. So I just carried on and between April and October 2007, I set eleven national records – I overtook all the men. I got the world records, then went ten days later to the word championships and got gold. That was a good year!

Can you explain the different disciplines of competitive freediving?

You’ve got pool disciplines: static, which is pure breath hold; dynamic with no fins, which is swimming lengths underwater; then dynamic with fins. On the deep side, you’ve got constant weight, which refers to all disciplines. With constant weight you wear just enough weight to assist your descent but not hamper your ascent. I would dive with 1 ¼ to 1 ½ kilos round my neck. You want the weight to be below the more buoyant part of you, which are your lungs.

So how is the constant weight category divided up?

There’s constant weight with fins – usually a monofin – where, in terms of depth, you achieve the most impressive numbers and so it’s also the most prestigious in terms of world and national records. Then there’s constant weight no fins, which is swimming breaststroke, more or less, down and then up. The level of technique required is phenomenal.

Between the highs of her successful run in 2007 and her recent 96m record, Campbell took a break from competition. She returned with all the ambition of a world-beater. Not content with setting a new depth record, just five days afterwards, she attempted to smash expectations with a 100m dive in Long Island: she achieved the distance, but was disqualified when she lost consciousness before breaking the surface. “I wasn't even able to string a sentence together,” she says. “I got cold sores around my mouth and I thought, my body is run down now. It's not wise to put it through that again."

What’s so different about you?

It’s a very complex mix, and we haven’t come close to understanding the physiological processes that go on underwater. I did tests with scientists in Italy who took me down to very low oxygen saturation levels: normally if you’re breathing anywhere below 98-97% oxygen saturation, you start hyperventilating in order to bring your oxygen levels up. But at 65% I was perfectly happy. Quite dizzy, and I nearly fell off my chair, but quite happy and not stressed or hyperventilating at all.

Isn’t this all just down to training your lungs, though?

My lungs have gone up slightly, to around four litres vital capacity. Compare that to [New Zealand freediver] Dave Mullins – OK, he’s two metres tall, but he’s got over ten litres. For my age and my size, my lungs are about 35% larger than average. Most freedivers would come out at around that number. Dave Mullins is about 55% larger than average.

What is it that enables you to make these huge dives?

Lung tissue, lung strength, and lung flexibility – the fact that I could get to 90 metres and never have any lung problems is pretty unique. Also the strength of my lungs has been helped by my yoga too. Erika Schagatay, who works at the Mid Sweden University, has been studying freedivers for about 14 years and she’s always had this belief that there are a group out there who just have it in them naturally. When I met her and explained what I’d done, she said ‘You’re the first. A natural freediver.’