Apnea Icehockey
by Jaromir Foukal

I would like, if I may, take you on a ice-cold journey. It began all some years ago. My training partner Dieter Baumann and I are sometimes very loony freedivers and so we were on the search for a special place to have our obsession. One of the first ideas was to dive with dolphins, but this is done so often. We decided to go a new, crazy way. The opposite of diving in warm sea with dolphins, is to dive under ice with penguins. So that should be crazy enough for us. And what would fit better for people who life in a mountainous area. In summer 1999 we visited different kinds of lakes to see which would be surely frozen in winter and has the kind of infrastructure we would need. Our final choice was "Weißensee" in Carinthia. Of course we had to cut off the penguin part here in Austria but beside the planned sportive part of deep and distance diving we wanted to do something special. So our idea was to try to play icehockey under ice. I think nobody had tried this before, and it was a fantastic idea indeed. Apnea Icehockey was born.

To document this event we booked one of the best underwater photographers in Europe. His name is Herbert Frey. You can see some pictures of this event on this site.

We also did a lot of training under ice before the real event. Dieter had already good experience with ice diving so it was easy for me just to follow him. Safety was the first priority. We invited some of our friends to dive with us and be also the scuba safety under water. As every scuba diver under ice is connected to a buddy on the surface with a rope, you need twice as much persons as on a normal safetydive.
The first gig in winter 99 was a dive for our own benefit. So much the more we were surprised, that some daily newspapers printed the story of two Austrian guys who played icehockey under ice the first time.

Each of us had his own hole for breathing and relaxing on the surface left and right near to the field. We reach an agreement, that one run always ends when the puck is in the goal. We waited at our hole and with an signal we dive to the puck. Each one tries to make the goal. If one of us has to breath the other had the chance to finish the game. We forgot to watch the time and forgot everything above us. There was only the puck , the goal and the contender. The time fade and the cameramen left us, but we didn't notice that. We did not stop our game before the sun came down. I don't know who had won and it didn't matter. The only thing that counted was, that we were the first who played Apnea Icehockey. I'm sure that in the future, even after watching the television, other freedivers will discover this passion and will follow us. Take a short impression and watch the videoclip, to taste the cold air and feel the game.