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Madrid: A Spanish woman who spent a record-breaking 500 days in a cave deep underground has said she did not want to come out.

Beatriz Flamini, 50, an extreme athlete, undertook the trial in an attempt to better understand the human mind and circadian rhythms. “I need a shower,” she said on reaching the entrance to the cave and seeing daylight for the first time since November 20, 2021 – before the outbreak of the Ukraine war and the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

A 50-year-old extreme athlete has emerged from a 500-day challenge living 70 metres deep in a cave outside Granada, Spain.Credit: Dokumalia

Flamini, who was 48 when she entered the cave, said the time flew by and she had no real notion of it. She was setting the new world record for underground isolation. She almost doubled the 269 days endured by Italian Christine Lanzoni in an underground laboratory, according to Andalusia’s Caving Federation.

“I didn’t want to come out,” Flamini said at a press conference held barely two hours after she emerged.

“I was sleeping, or snoozing at least, and I heard people. I thought they were coming to tell me I had to leave because something had happened.”

Yes, the 500 days she had planned to spend isolated were over. Asked how long it felt like in the constant darkness of the cave, Flamini said: “If I tried to calculate, it would feel like about 160 days, but nothing like 500.”

Wearing dark glasses and smiling as she adjusted to the light of spring in southern Spain, elite mountaineer Beatriz Flamini told reporters that time had flown by and she did not want to come out.Credit: Dokumalia

Her trial of resilience is being used as an experiment to provide data for scientists studying the capacities of the human mind and human circadian rhythms at the universities of Granada and Almeria as well as a Madrid-based sleep clinic.

Flamini, an experienced climber and mountaineer, said she got through the solitude by “always remaining in the present”.

“If I am cooking, I am cooking. If I am crawling through a little hole, that’s what I am doing. If I lose concentration, I might make a mistake and twist my ankle,” she explained.

Elite mountaineer Beatriz Flamini spent 500 days underground concentrating on “being present”.Credit: Dokumalia

Asked whether she had let her mind drift to loved ones, she said “placing one’s thoughts in the past or the future would have generated anxiety”, something she, as an elite athlete, knows is fatal to any endeavour.

She was monitored by psychologists, who could decide to have her removed if they felt her mental health was deteriorating. To kill the time, she read 60 books, did exercise and knitted hats.

The Telegraph, London

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