Same in the Netherlands. People always complaining that there are no local competitions and when we did one this year we had to struggle and bribe people to get in. In the end it was a great comp but almost not worth it with just over 10 competitors.
We have still new people in our pipeline but less then 5% of them are interested in competitions ,which in itself is not a bad thing looking at what we emphasize in our courses, but similar numbers from the other dutch clubs.
Also for beginning freedivers it is expensive and scary to go to a big international comp, since you feel you are not good enough for something like that.
I still remember my first intl. comp and was skared shitless ;-). Took me a lot of courage to dare to enter. So without smaller low budget local comps newbies will not easy jump in the big pool.
Thats why we still try and do it at least one a year.
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