Mandy-Rae Cruikshank once described free diving as a mental battle with evil monkeys who rode on her shoulders, chattering destructive thoughts as she swam deep into the ocean with nothing but a face mask and the air in her lungs.
"They can get to you," she said. "They say stuff like 'Whoa, you're really deep! You'll never make it! You're out of air, girl!' They want to freak you out."
Yesterday, as she swam deeper than any woman in history, grabbing a plastic tag at the end of a line set 91 metres below the waves off Grand Cayman Island, Ms. Cruikshank managed to keep the monkeys at bay, but that wasn't enough - as she approached the surface after almost nearly four minutes without air, she passed out underwater, killing her bid for a new world record.
"It wasn't my day," Ms. Cruikshank, who went for observation at a Grand Cayman hospital after being pulled from the water and resuscitated by her husband, free diving coach Kirk Krack. [globeandmail.com]
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