by Garth Meyer
In May, Christina Sours, of Redondo Beach, took first place overall for women at the Azul Freediving Challenge at Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Last year, she won the 2022 Redondo Beach Vertical Green competition.
On Saturday, Sours leaves for The World Conference of Underwater Activities Freediving Championships, starting Aug. 19 in Routan, Honduras.
Sours is one of five U.S. team members from greater Los Angeles. Captain Lance Lee Davis lives in Torrance.
“You can learn so much from the free diving people around you,” Sours said. “If you get the chance to train, it’s amazing what you can do.”
She has competed for only three years.
At the Worlds, she plans to compete in each of four dive categories: no fins, free immersion (pulling down along the line, no fins); bi-fins and monofin.
Each are “constant weight” dives, which means a diver may wear a weight belt but does not discard it before ascending.
Bi-fins is Sours’ strongest discipline, followed by free immersion.
Underwater effects
The San Carlos native has been a SCUBA diver since she was 14. She began free diving in 2020, in Baja while qualifying for her SCUBA Rescue Certification.
Later that year, while in Sydney, Australia for five months, working in visual effects for Industrial Light and Magic on “Thor: Love and Thunder,” Sours served as an assistant freedive instructor.
After Sydney, she left ILM, and now works as a wedding photographer, and freedive instructor. She has lived in Redondo Beach for two years
Sours trains, and teaches in the water off Veterans Park. The 600-foot deep Redondo submarine canyon is just a quarter-mile offshore from the park.
Training to hold one’s breath for long periods is done with repeatedly shorter breath holds, called “CO2 Tables” – doing half of your maximum 6 to 8 times, twice a week.
“I’m hoping to get to the early 60 meters. And cheer on my teammates,” she said of the upcoming competition.
Sours’ personal best is more than 60 meters deep – almost 200 feet.
Points in freediving are earned by the awarding of cards. A white card means the diver made it back to the surface with no help from safety divers. A yellow card is earned if a diver turned back early without grabbing the tag at the end of the line (set at the designated depths), or lost the tag on the way up.
A red card means no points because the diver had a hypoxic incident (shortage of air), did not give the “OK” sign to the event official within 15 seconds of surfacing, or they pulled on the line on the way up, or down.
Dives depths are announced by the competitors the night before. A diver who announces he or she will dive 30 meters receives 30 points if successful.
Worlds is a weeklong competition, with one type of dive per day.
In April, Sours trained in Dominica, in the Caribbean, for two weeks. “You can access depth easily. You get the luxury of the short swim-out and the beautiful warm, clear ocean,” she said.
In the Caribbean, neoprene wetsuits are three millimeters thick, she said, while at Redondo Beach they are 5 to 6 millimeters, and require extra dive weights to counter the added buoyancy.
At freediving competitions, hypoxia, or blacking out from lack of oxygen, is not uncommon. Safety divers will pull the diver to the surface. Even divers who surface on their own may lose motor control. When that happens, helping the diver recover may involve blowing air across their eyelids, tapping on their collarbone, and repeating the diver’s name while talking to them.
Sours is one of 17 free divers on the U.S. team, with 11 senior divers, under age 50; and six master divers over 50.
The five LA area team members held a barbecue in June in captain Davis’ Torrance backyard, to raise money for the teams’ entry fees and expenses.
Sours’ sponsors, including the dive shop Just Get Wet in San Diego, and instructors Depth Wish, of Florida.
Live streaming of the World Championships may be found on YouTube. ER
