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In 2019, French deep freediver and National Record holder (FIM) Thibault Guignes suffered a blackout during a freediving competition in Kalamata, Greece. Fortunately, everything was recorded on video. We decided to share it, as blackouts can be a taboo subject for freedivers, especially for the well-known ones. Sharing such content can have a positive, educational impact on the community.
"This dive took place in Kalamata, in Greece, in August 2019, and it was my first blackout underwater ever. The dive in itself was a -100m dive, bifins. I had done -110m a few days before in training and this was a competition dive so I decided to be conservative and for the first day of the competition to go for -100m. It turned out that I was starting to have health issues I wasn't aware of yet. It was mostly a lack of potassium that can cause arrhythmia and this coupled with the arrhythmia of the thermocline around 40 meters caused my heart to skip a few beats! I lost consciousness, but fortunately, I had great safety, Nicholas (Kouvaras) brought me back to the surface in a timely manner and I woke up very quickly.