Three pool disciplines, three medals – the AIDA Pool World Championships are over

Matt Malina surprises us with each and every tournament he takes part in. At the end of June the Individual AIDA Pool World Championships took place in Belgrade, Serbia.

Matt defended his DNF World Champion title and won a medal in each discipline he took part in – as the only competitor!

In his best discipline, the DNF (no-fin dynamics) he placed 1st and defended his World Title, diving 226m on June 28th, 2018 which is unofficial World Record in an Olympic pool (50 m long). It’s worth mentioning that this was his 3rd time in a row winning this discipline!

In DYN (dynamics with a monofin) Matt says he “got lucky” and won a bronze medal diving 203m. The last start of the tournament was the STA (static holding breath underwater) discipline, where Matt also won the bronze medal AND a National Record of 8 minutes 46 seconds!

The tournament lasted 6 days day-after-day, without a break, which really took a toll on the participant’s bodies. Matt says:

It was a tiresome time, but now that it’s over I can say I’m very proud of myself. In the general classification (all points) I lost after a tough fight with Goran Colak by 0,8 point (which is 4 seconds). It’s not the goal, but the road to it that counts. These kind of tournaments have their own dynamics, their ups and downs and I got to experience the full spectrum! 🙂
During those 6 days I had one hard day, when the tiredness caught up with me as well as the pressure, which resulted in me giving up on my dive too early – during the DYN finals after turning at 200m I was feeling like 250m during training – I couldn’t fight it, my body wouldn’t listen.

What’s important, every tournament start is a lesson for future dives, there are no failures. After all, you can’t win everything.

As usual a huge support was Matt’s wife Aleksandra, who he claims to be responsible for half of his successes! 🙂

This time, the tournament was joined by Matt’s training partners Karol Karcz and Michał Dąbrowski, and the support of the “Limitless Team” was visible throughout the whole tournament.

Matt would like to thank everyone who supported him during his preparations as well as during the tournament and is proud to be able to represent his home country Poland on the international level with many great athletes!