Winnipeg free diver taking the plunge

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This article was published 10/09/2023 (852 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the atmospheric pressure rises and the light fades, Brodie O’Rourke shines his brightest.

O’Rourke, 34, isn’t the only one who’s perhaps most comfortable when the stakes are highest. He’s part of an exclusive — and quickly growing — group of free divers in Manitoba who plunge dozens of meters below the surface with the goal of challenging themselves to go a little deeper each time.

“When you’re down there, it’s really pushing yourself and it feels great when you come back,” O’Rourke said. “You’re experiencing hypoxia — extreme oxygen concentration because of the pressure at depth — so you kind of get a euphoric feeling from that; effects from narcosis have a euphoric feeling.

“You are pushing the limits. I guess what it’s all about is the moment when you reach the bottom. It’s just you there by yourself on a single breath hold, (40 meters) away from your next breath. It’s addicting — I want to go deeper and longer, I want to expand the sport in Manitoba, let everyone else know about it and try it and, possibly, have competitions here in the future.”

Indeed, O’Rourke wants to reach depths Canadians have never touched before, and he’s well on his way.

The Pas product set a Manitoban record in free immersion diving (pulling himself down by rope) and constant weight bi-fins (diving with fins on his feet), going 30 metres and 33 metres, respectively, into the body of Ansell Point at the Howe Deep 2023 AIDA free diving depth competition in Vancouver in August.

A pair of remarkable plunges saw O’Rourke hold his breath for 76 seconds in the free immersion dive and kick his way three meters deeper, much like a scuba diver, while holding his breath for 66 seconds in the bi-fin dive.

Though there were no previous records set by Manitobans, it certainly didn’t take away from O’Rourke’s accomplishment in his debut free diving competition.

“It’s gotta start somewhere,” he said.

O’Rourke has been in water since 2002, when he was a pre-teen learning to scuba dive during his summers at Clearwater Lake. It was around that time when he first heard of free diving, and the thought of pushing himself to unchartered depths immediately piqued his interest.

For the next 20 years, he continued to refine his skills as a scuba diver while practising free diving periodically in swimming pools and at Clearwater Lake, going as deep as 30 feet below the surface.

“Not properly trained, just amateur,” O’Rourke said.

“I would just go on my own. It wasn’t as safe then. There really wasn’t anyone to learn from back then — no instructors. I would only go down about 30 feet, which isn’t very deep for free diving. And I’d actually wear a life jacket. With the risk of blackouts, at least if I blackout down there, if I wear a life jacket I’ll float back to the surface.”

In 2020, O’Rourke decided to take freediving more seriously. His search led him to Luca Malaguti, a cold-water free diving instructor in Calgary, who trained him for two weeks at the Dive Shop, which, at the time, was the only local pool that hadn’t been shuttered by the worsening pandemic.

In August of 2021, O’Rourke got his first crack at the open water, again with Malaguti, but this time in Vancouver.

In January, after two years of travelling to destinations such as Dominica, Mexico and Cabo for his certifications, he finished his Wave Three AIDA (International Association for the Development of Apnea) certification. In February, O’Rourke became a certified freediving instructor.

“When I got into freediving three years ago, it was when I was making a ’40 by 40’ list. So my goal at the time was to (reach) a 40-meter free dive. I hit 40 meters for the first time in January in Dominica,” O’Rourke said.

“Now I’ve met that goal and now I’m like, ‘ Maybe I can go deeper.’ I’m hooked on it now and want to keep going, do more competitions and train students.”

More people are learning about freediving and it’s generating a bit more interest these days, according to Alexandra De Sousa, who’s been a certified freediving instructor since 2019.

“People are seeing more people doing it when they go on their vacations, they’re seeing it more on social media and it’s really starting to be a more common question that I’m answering at the shop,” said De Sousa, 25, who helps run Underworld Scuba and Sport, a family-owned dive shop in Winnipeg.

De Sousa, who was the first female PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) in Manitoba, explained much of the public interest stems from a greater understanding — and following — of safety precautions in the water.

She said some movies and documentaries have indirectly shed a negative light on the sport, as they typically only show dangerous experiences to appease the audience. In her training courses, however, there’s an overbearing emphasis on communication to her students, to avoid the harmful and fatal accidents that are often shown.

“I like to say, ‘You don’t want to flirt with your limits, you just want to stay away from them and train until you’re confident and comfortable.’ There’s a lot of fun little jungles I give when I’m instructing like, ‘We’re risk managers, not risk takers,’ and ‘Over communication over under communication every single time,’ she said.

“You almost want to be annoyed with the level of communication that you are giving your partner instead of under-communicating because that’s how mistakes happen, is when you make assumptions.”

O’Rourke spends many of his evenings in the pool at Altea Active in Winnipeg, practising short-breath holds and training for his next plunge. An emphasis on meditation caught him off-guard when he started training to become an instructor, he said, but it’s helped him for the better.

“A lot of it’s about mindfulness and you have to be in a meditative state before your dive if you want to go far. It’s a unique sport in that you’re pushing the human body to the extremes and some of the athletes that are going this deep are almost falling asleep on their way down. Sometimes they have sub-resting heart rates to save oxygen,” he said.

O’Rourke has accomplished just about everything he’s dreamed of in freediving at this point in his life but knows there’s more out there for him to explore. That’s the beauty of his limitless sport.

“I look forward to a time where I have enough notoriety or students where I can make a living off it, but that’s years away. Short term I’d like to certify some students, and longer-term is to train for more records.”

jfreysam@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jfreysam