[trux]

DQ for the given competition would be OK from my point of view. I am not sure about the disqualifying for longer after it - as a punitive factor it may miss its purpose, because I do not think that there are too many freedivers competing each week or two. And making it considerably longer would ruin the entire season which may be too harsh, and might have counterproductive result - increased pre-start stress and possibly even higher number of sambas and BO's. The stress is definitely a factor at BO's - we have in our club several freedivers who had LMC or BO during competitions doing just ~75% of their PB, although it never happens to them during the training.

From the health point, it won't have any impact. If the freediver cannot compete, he will almost certainly train immediately anyway. I think we can conclude that the effect would be purely punitive.

Besides it, I am afraid such rule might be abused for strategic manipulations, and could lead to many complaints, similarly as it was the case with LMC. It is often very difficult to distinguish between strong samba and BO. And why should be BO punished, and strong samba not? And when punishing strong samba, why not also mild samba? Telling what level of LMC or BO you have may be quite difficult and extremely subjective.

Another problem are LMC's/BO's caused by the organizer - for example stress added by the organizer due to last minute schedule change, too long rope, unsuitable tags (like it was the case in Egypt), etc. What to do then? As we saw in Egypt, allowing to repeat the attempt is not the best solution - AFAIK, at least one of those who repeated the attempt, blacked out again, although he was well in his secure margin. But DQ is too harsh, especially if it is a team competition - maybe giving some points in such case, but not allowing to compete for the rest of the event would be better and more secure.

Well, I agree that something should be done - BO's and sambas are far too common, but think that it will take a while before some acceptable and maximally objective system is in place.