Malseed sets freedive record at world champs

Burning desire for freediving: Suzy Malseed at the freediving world championships in Jeju, South Korea, when she had just set a New Zealand record for distance covered in the dynamic bifins event. It was also briefly an Oceania “continental” record but an Australian freediver set a new mark later in the event. Picture supplied

Gisborne woman Suzy Malseed tells John Gillies about life, family and freediving as she returned from South Korea to her home in Victoria, Australia.

A 46-year-old mother of twins was New Zealand’s sole representative at the AIDA Freediving World Championship in South Korea last month.

Suzy Malseed (nee Osler), formerly of Gisborne, contested all four disciplines on offer at the pool-based event for individual competitors.

AIDA is the acronym for the French title of an organisation that in English is called the International Association for the Development of Apnea. In this context, apnea refers to breath-holding under water.

The championship events did not include depth freediving disciplines, which are normally held at sea.

Malseed achieved a New Zealand record for distance covered in the dynamic bifins event, in which competitors wear two fins. Just before the world champs, the record had been extended from 170 metres to 175m by Kathryn Nevatt at a competition in Wellington.

Malseed swam 177 metres before coming up for air. That effort also briefly constituted an Oceania continental record. An Australian freediver won a protest and was allowed to do a re-swim the following day, and broke the day-old record.

“I wasn’t sure what I was capable of as the most I had done in training was 120m, so I surprised myself,” Malseed said.

In the dynamic no-fins event she swam 137m, a personal best. This event allows no means of propulsion other than the competitor’s own body.

The static event is an underwater breath-hold, with no distance component. Malseed held her breath for five minutes and 32 seconds.

In the dynamic monofin, she swam 181 metres. This was the event in which Malseed – in a silver-medal-winnning performance at the world champs in Denmark in 2009 – became only the second woman to swim

200 metres.

“I’m heading back to where I was . . .

20 metres to go,” she said.

That 2009 mark still stands as a New Zealand record, although Nevatt (mentioned in relation to the New Zealand bifins record) equalled it in 2018.

Malseed said the monofin was much larger than the combined size of bifins and pushed more water. An athlete trained in monofin technique would swim farther with a monofin than with bifins.

She had also won the silver medal in this event at the 2005 world champs in Switzerland.

In an article she wrote for a New Zealand freedivers’ magazine, she described her relationship with freediving as “intense”.

“It really was love at first sight for me,” she said. “I still remember how much my world changed the instant I started training in Auckland with No Bubbles, coached by John Wright.”

She was part of the first freediving team to represent New Zealand, when they competed in Vancouver, Canada, in 2004. She went on to compete individually at the world championships in Switzerland and Denmark before taking a break to have her family.

She felt her freedive training carried her through many of life’s challenges, including the contractions of childbirth.

“I truly believe that freediving is great training for life, and life is great training for freediving,” she said in the freedivers’ magazine article.

“In 2018, at 41 years of age, I knew that I needed freediving back in my life and so I trained hard for the Pan Pacific Pool Championships in Tokyo. I was part of the New Zealand team that travelled over and really enjoyed being part of the scene again.

“However, as soon as I got back to the family and the farm, I was swallowed up again for another five years with work and my young family. Luckily some of these years coincided with Covid, where everything fun was cancelled, so that helped me feel a bit better about my diving fomo (fear of missing out).

“Pausing my love of freediving was painful for me, but necessary. I realised I ‘could have it all’ but just not at the same time. The challenge of juggling family/work/life/money/freediving is real, for us all.

“Basically, I chose to have a family and in our case that involved numerous rounds of IVF, which quickly depleted diving funds. Fortunately, we won the lottery (twice!) with our beautiful and much-loved twins.

“The past 12 years are a beautiful busy blur of love, laughs, family, farming, and multiple international moves (from Australia to Singapore to South Africa to Australia to Indonesia and back to Australia again). It’s a long story but every time my husband Robbie was offered a job overseas, we said ‘yes’.

“Last year I dipped my toes back in with some basic pool training and it didn’t take me long to get the bug again. Soon my 50m dynamics were becoming easier, and I felt that familiar stirring in my belly. Maybe I could do this again?

“I found that the depth and big swims of the old days (the 200m swim in Denmark) were overwhelming and best left as happy memories rather than a stick to whack myself with, but I was loving the peace that the regular pool training was giving me.”

Malseed says she plans to one day return to deep diving — her favourite aspect of freediving — but doesn’t have access to the facilities to train for that discipline.

“As my children grow I will invest more time in this space — I look forward to returning to the depth. It is an adaptation process that makes you understand and respect your body and mind so much. When you freedive you combine body, mind and breath and it’s an incredible feeling.”

The pool world championships on Jeju Island, South Korea, last month were special to her for several reasons.

It was the first time the world championships had been held in Asia — normally they’d be held in Europe — so this time it was cheaper and easier for her to take part. The event was a success . . . 180 athletes took part in the biggest world championships yet.

“I used to work in South Korea so was very excited to return,” Malseed said.

“I taught English there as soon as I graduated from uni, in late 1998, to 2000. South Korea holds many happy memories for me and I am a great fan of Korean culture,  food and people.

“I always promised myself that when it was possible from a family perspective (my family is and has always been my priority) I would return to freediving. But there’s always a little part of you that wonders if you can pick up something that you put down over 12 years ago. I didn’t know the answer but I needed to find out.

“I’m always telling my kids to be brave, carve their own path and follow their dreams. I realised I needed to lead by example. I honestly didn’t know how I would go as a 46-year-old mum starting again but the desire to find out burned so strongly inside me I could no longer ignore it. My family understand and support me as much as I do them.”

She was “very, very pleased” with her results because she trained in unconventional ways as she didn’t have a freediving club around her.

“There’s a lot of necessary safety protocol associated with freediving,” Malseed said.

“So, for anyone interested in learning, you must do a freediving course or join a club to be able to train safely.

“Because I have a lot of muscle memory (I’ve done my 10,000 hours!), my training consists of physical farm work with my husband, gymnastics with my daughter Poppy (that’s her sport of choice) and footy (AFL) with my son Max, as he always needs someone to kick, mark, ruck and practise bumps with. It’s our way of doing all the things that need to be done within the family.

“I swim in the pool where I live but I am unable to do long breath-holds (for safety reasons, freedivers never train alone) so I must bring a friend or my hubby to the pool to safety me when I want to do a breath-hold.

“I have developed other ways to train that I wanted to test (visualisation and mental/mindset training). This ties in my corporate, teaching and human performance background and enables me to train safely out of the water.

“This is very ‘unconventional’ but it worked for me and I’m already being asked to share how I am able to perform when I don’t have a club to train with.

“Freediving is a beautiful sport which is gathering a lot of international interest because of the human performance aspect.

“Most simply we dive underwater, without air. We are using all of our resources to push our minds and bodies to the human limits. It’s very exciting.

“Researchers are very interested in freedivers as we can do what was always thought impossible. Scientists and doctors are fascinated by freedivers. We have been playing in the space of mind and breath control for many years.

“I have a saying which rings true for me: ‘How you do anything is how you do everything’. This explains how I live my life. Whether I’m farming, freediving,  parenting, teaching or delivering newspapers, I’m taking the job seriously and giving it my all. I think this attitude is the edge I bring, and certainly my grounded upbringing in Gisborne has served me well.”

A highlight of her time in South Korea for the world championships was a three-hour complimentary session at Deep Station, Asia’s deepest swimming pool, in Seoul. Athletes competing in the world champs were each given a voucher.

“I buddied up with a freediver from Hong Kong and one from France,” Malseed said.

“We dived together and kept each other safe as we all did multiple freedives to 36 metres. It was an incredible experience.

“Three days prior, we had competed alongside each other. But really in freediving it is so personal you only ever compete with who you were yesterday. This enables you to befriend all freediving athletes, which is special.”

Malseed, daughter of David and Wynn Osler, grew up in Gisborne and attended Te Hapara, Gisborne Intermediate and Gisborne Girls’ High schools. She worked for The Gisborne Herald as a paper girl and an office cleaner.

At high school, her sport of choice was rowing, and later she was in a Wainui Surf Life Saving Club canoe crew coached by Murray Robertson.

At Waikato University she studied business management and Chinese.

Since then she has worn many hats. In 2022 she was a finalist in the Wild Atlantic Writing Awards, an Irish literary competition in which she entered a short story in the creative non-fiction category. It was based on a typical morning’s interaction with her daughter and son, twins with ADHD, as they banter during their carefully structured breakfast routine.

She has also been interviewed on the Faster Than Normal podcast — which promotes the idea that having ADHD is a gift, not a curse — about raising twins who have ADHD and the benefits in wellbeing that she derives from freediving.

Malseed has been a teacher and works with schools promoting beach clean-ups.

“I’m a huge advocate and lover of the ocean — and kids — and believe that the more we can do to instil in kids a passion for the ocean, the more it will pay dividends over time,” she said.

“People tend to care for what they love.”

She is also about to do some speaking to encourage children to think big, be brave and follow their own path in life.

On top of all that, she and her husband Robbie have a farm, Speckle Park Cattle Stud, in southwest Victoria, Australia.

It’s a busy lifestyle, and freediving provides a time of peace and quiet amid the hustle and bustle.

For anyone wanting to follow Suzy Malseed’s journey, her instagram account is @noairsuzy.