CMAS 1st EUROPEAN APNEA CHAMPIONSHIP

[trux]

As for the discipline, I think it is an interesting idea, although it has little to do with the spirit of freediving and as others told it is closer to fin-swimming. On the other hand, I realize that there are many sportsmen especially among young freedivers who actually appreciate speed disciplines or hypercapnic apnea (i.e. relays) more than time/distance disciplines.

I worry, though, little bit for the safety - many freedivers (especially CMAS freedivers) have their PB just a few meters above 100m, so when rushing the 100m for time and having to reach the wall, I fear the risk of blackouts and sambas is rather great. We know very well that both great physical effort (high speed) and focus (reaching the wall) are besides hyperventilation the most important factors contributing to blackouts.

Still, I am very much curious about the outcome and about the number of blackouts or sambas. I wish you and all participants to avoid them, but they should be all well aware that they are in a much higher risk and should be very careful. Especially, because it may be difficult to assure good safety if there are multiple freedivers racing concurrently in the same time, which I understood will be the case. I wonder if there will be at least two safety divers for each competitor in each lane. If yes, I am afraid it will be a great chaos. If not, then you risk getting really bad problems and we could see a very serious incident (or several of them in the same time).

[TRITON]

Originally Posted by Mullins

Well on one hand I would like to have competed with ALL the freedivers in the world; there appear to be some good athletes in CMAS and it's a real pity we are not all on the same list. Joking aside, 200m with no samba is still a good swim - the youtube video looks cool. But I would see competing in a CMAS competition to be lending legitimacy to their organisation. An organisation that 1. acts like a pack of fascists and 2. is against freediving. Constant Weight with and without fins IS freediving as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not going to give my implicit support to a governing body that would like to see it stopped.

I totally agree with Dave when defining CMAS as "against freediving".If they really cared for our sport of freediving they WOULD cooperate with AIDA and wouldn't prohibit their competitors to participate in AIDA competitions. Also when we talk about safety, I can say that there was a highest level of safety at the AIDA WC in Sharm and people who say that AIDA= BO,LMC,disregarding the rules... is talking rubish.

[Billextreme]

Dear Friends,

CMAS is trying... and trying. Nothing wrong with that, but I guess they could check up what the athletes wants to do. If they did this it would look a lot different.

About Speed Apnea, this is only a way to make it a little more interesting for the finswimmers, and a try to have them over so the numbers of athletes in their Apnea competitions will be higher. NOTHING ELSE !

Apnea is "low pulse - long time"

Speed Apnea is "high pulse - short time" ...just like U/W rugby.

For me, Speed Apnea is a new discipline in finswimming, but I guess you can BO after finnish a race in finswimming - but not in Speed Apnea (I hope)

Anyway, AIDA do not have any problem with CMAS, but the opposite is very obvious :-(

/B

(if there is any CMAS athletes who wants to compete in both AIDA and CMAS competitions, please e-mail me and I will help you)