Tom Lightfoot's Home Site

Introduction

This site contains my various musings, stories and photos about freediving.

My Story

Freediving means different things to different people. The common denominator for all is that it involves going underwater while holding one's breath. Beyond that it can mean advanced snorkelling, breath-hold spearfishing, or trying for depth records.

The Early Days

As for myself, you could say that I have been practicing freediving for almost thirty years, although I never thought of it that way. I just thought of it as snorkelling or skin diving, even though from the very beginning I would make regular trips down to ten feet or so. The first time I realized that the term 'freediving' could actually apply to me was in March of '96 when I was swimming with the whale sharks off of the Ningaloo reef in Western Australia. After I came up from a cruise with a shark at around 30 feet, the divemaster/guide said, "Wow, you're a great freediver!" The comment surprised me because I never thought of myself as one but I guess I was a freediver.

In January of '98 I was between jobs so I went to the Cayman Islands to visit some friends and do some scuba diving. While down there I took a course on freediving from a Canadian guy named Dan Hodgins at DiveTech. After the course I was able to go past 60 feet and even stay there comfortably for a few seconds. I was hooked.

The Competitive Years

Two years later, Dan's partner in crime, Kirk Krack moved from Cayman to Vancouver and decided to start something up here. Kirk trained American freedive stars Brett LeMaster and Tanya Streeter in their world record dives. That March, I attended a talk and video show Kirk was putting on at BC Dive Adventures. Shortly afterwards I got deeply involved. We spent the summer freediving and I became competitive.

After a few months of competitive training, my best depth more than doubled to well past what I ever did on scuba. In 2000 I competed in national trials and qualified as the alternate to the Canadian Men's Team competing at the AIDA World Cup at Nice, France in October. I have since competed for Team Canada as an actual competitor at the World Freediving Championships in Ibiza Spain in 2001 and at the Pacific Cup of Freediving in Kona, Hawaii in 2002.

I have also held three national freediving records:

Since that time, all Canadian Men's records have been obliterated by a guy name William Winram, who ironically used to kick my butt in competitive swimming in Victoria in the early 1980's.

Present Day

Over the past few years, my freediving career has transformed from being compeititive to more supportive in nature. Most of my in-water time is spent either instructing with Performance Freediving, judging competitions or safety diving. However, I still like to train and compete when I can, which is not often.

In February of 2007 I finally bought myself a digital underwater camera. I've had an underwater camera for the past 25 years or so but this new one (a SeaLife DC500 with strobe) is much more capable and it has added a whole new dimension to my freediving. I've hardly gone a weekend without using it. You can see several of my more recent freediving photos here.