Patricia Paige Ong is a national record-holding freediver from Singapore, who finished 2024 ranked third in the world across all disciplines. Despite the records and medals, however, the niche sport suffers from a lack of consistent support and recognition.
Fresh from the AIDA World Pool Freediving Championships in Wakayama, Japan, Patricia chronicles the highs and lows of her competition outing. This is what it means to be a high-performance athlete in a lesser-known sport in Singapore.
All images and videos courtesy of Patricia Paige Ong.
There are, in fact, many ways to begin a World Championship.
Mine started in Wakayama, Japan, in a hotel bathroom, trying to repair a gaping hole in my wetsuit with neoprene glue and blind optimism.
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I was crouched on the floor, pinching seams together with one hand, blasting a hairdryer with the other. The smell was strong, the nerves were stronger.
The glue was still tacky when my cab arrived at the competition pool—three minutes late.
Just like that: No start. No dive. No points. Day 1 was a bust.
I sat poolside in my half-dry suit, watching the competition unfold without me, equal parts embarrassed and amused.
But let’s rewind a little.
The Lead-Up
In the months before the AIDA World Pool Freediving Championships, training had been patchy at best.
I was juggling too many things—teaching swimming to pay the bills, trying to launch my freediving business, gathering together the funds to get to Japan in the first place.
The week-long trip was going to set me back about $3,000; flights, accommodation, registration fees, food, and other small items like goggles add up quickly. Most weeks, I only trained if my schedule aligned with a buddy’s. Some weeks, I didn’t train at all.
Thankfully, Sports SG came through with some funding for my travel expenses, and the fantastic Zen Freediving Club gave me free access to their pool sessions.
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A month out, it was clear I wasn’t ready in the traditional sense. So I made a call: focus on static apnea.
In case you’re not fluent in aquatic masochism (aka freediving), world championship competitions are usually spread across four days: Three days of dynamic disciplines and one static.
Dynamic means swimming horizontally along a pool as far as possible on a single breath—either with a monofin (like a mermaid), no fins (just your limbs), or bifins (yes, self-explanatory). Results are measured in the metres you travel.
Static is what it sounds like: Lying still, face-down in water, holding your breath until your brain starts sending angry voicemails. The duration is recorded in minutes and seconds.
If my breath-hold was strong, I reasoned, if my mind was calm, that foundation would carry me through the other disciplines. Maybe I wouldn’t hit peak performance, but I could hold my own.
That was the strategy. That was the hope.
Day 2. No Fins.
The glue held. Thank you, hotel hairdryer.
On land, I was vibrating. A cocktail of adrenaline, nerves, and self-doubt.
While I was glued together by neoprene and nerves, fellow athlete and friend Tracy Roxanne was the one keeping me sane. She has a thing she says: ‘Whenever you feel anxiety, smile as big as you can,’ And she doesn’t just say it—she is it! Her whole presence radiates the grin-before-fear energy.
The moment I slipped under, the water took it all. My heart rate dropped. My mind stopped buzzing.
This was DNF—Dynamic No Fins. The purist’s choice. No gear, no help. Just your body, your breath, and the long, silent pool ahead.
My Personal Best (PB) going in was around 125m in a standard 50m pool. At 150m, I still felt strong. I turned at the wall—still fresh! I took one more stroke and decided to come up to be safe.
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But then I surfaced and in my excitement, I fumbled the surface protocol—basically the post-dive handshake with the judges. I got the order wrong. Red card. Dive disqualified. National record lost.
But honestly? I didn’t care. The dive felt epic. Clean. Confident. 155m. It told my nervous system exactly what it needed to hear: You’re fine. You belong. You’ve got this.
Day 3. Rest Day.
Also known as: The Fasting.
To lower my oxygen consumption for the static leg of the competition, I decided not to eat. At all. By fooling my body into thinking I was starving, I might turn down the metabolism a notch—kind of like telling your iPhone it’s in low-power mode, except the iPhone is your brain.
Biohack or mild self-torture? Depends on your vibe.
I wandered around Wakayama, trying not to look at food. Instagram, of course, served me mochi. TikTok sent me gyoza. I drank sugar-free kombucha and bitterness.
At 9 PM, I finally broke the fast with a single, small bowl of salted porridge, and it tasted much better than it should have. Transcendental even. Possibly holy. But then it was gone. Just enough to provide glucose for the following day.
Day 4. Static.
Static apnea is the most boring freediving event to watch and the most brutal to endure.
You float face-down in the pool, doing nothing except holding your breath and trying not to pass out or think about lunch.
But somehow—after everything—this was the day it all came together.
I lay down. Closed my eyes. Disappeared into stillness. My fellow Singaporean athlete Yang Shichen coached me through the hold—calm, steady, and grounding. He talked me through each phase as my mind and body began throwing challenges at me.
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The rising tide of carbon dioxide triggering involuntary contractions in my diaphragm. The whispers from deep in my brainstem—my medulla—urging me to quit. And finally, the gentle, eerie bliss of creeping hypoxia.
He kept me focused. I kept holding.
When I surfaced, I’d broken the national record. And it felt easy.
The judge raised the white card. I beamed. Then, all the repressed optimism that had built up over the last two dives overflowed. Finally, something had gone right. I started bouncing in the water, in front of the bemused judges, like a caffeinated jellybean on a pogo stick.
That breath-hold carried the weight of everything: the missed dives, the tight budget, the bad training blocks, the side gigs, the neoprene glue.
And it held.
Day 5. Monofin.
This is the glamour event—Dynamic apnea (DYN) with monofin.
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You strap a single fin to both feet and turn yourself into a human dolphin. Long, fluid, powerful kicks. It looks beautiful when it works, and… not beautiful, when it doesn’t.
This dive? It worked.
I pushed 6 metres past the national record and surfaced with gas to spare. It felt like dancing underwater. I surfaced smiling. Joyful. Clear-headed. I didn’t just survive this one—I owned it. 206m on one breath.
Blue-lipped is bad—a sign of cyanosis from hypoxia. I was pink-lipped and proud.
Hold Your Breath
I completed two dives with solid performances and new national records. But with two red cards—one for Day 1’s no-dive, one for Day 2’s surface protocol fumble—I didn’t get an overall ranking. And yet, if I’d just made safe dives, dives I’d achieved previously in competition, on days 1 and 2, I’d have placed 4th overall.
That’s the heartbreak and the beauty of this sport. You don’t get what you could have. You only get what you do, at the exact moment you break the surface—glue stains and all.
Next year, the competition will be in Budapest. I’ll be training properly. Strategically.
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But I’ll also need support—again, I hope, from SportSG, whose contributions helped fund part of my expenses this year—and hopefully from private sponsors who believe in what I’ve already proven.
In 2024, I finished the year ranked number three in the world across all pool and depth disciplines. This year, at the AIDA Pool World Championships—with little training—I made a decent showing on the world stage.
Imagine what I could do with time, structure, and funding.
I’m ready to do the work if someone out there is ready to back it. Oh, and I’ll bring a spare wetsuit. Or at least make sure my hotel has a decent hairdryer.
