Why Italy is upset with AIDA

[joefox]

As you probably know, Umberto Pelizzari has declined AIDA judges for his next record attempt.

Stephan Whelan says:

"It seems the Italian federation of freedivers was upset with the way the AIDA World Championships were held".

Italian federation is "upset" because our Silvia Dal Bon was disqualified for "samba" after her static performance.
Our female team didn't win because of this decision.
That's why the italian federation has decided not to attend any AIDA competition in future.
Andrea Badiello (manager of female team ) said: "Disqualification criteria must be clear. We will not participate to AIDA competitions until clear rules will be introduced".

I've seen the video of Silvia's performance, but I'm Italian so I cannot be objective.

Did anyone see it as well ?

I'd like your comments.

JoeFox

[jero]

Joefox!
I saw the static attempts of the Italian girls on the video and in person.
The thing is that Silvia had a little samba, but I could not notice it in person. Just after rewinding the video a couple of times I could tell that it was samba. I guess that is what the judges did (rewinding the tape over and over again) and than decided to disqualife her. I must say she handled it well, and if she had a little more expirience maybe she could avoid this little samba she had. She looked at the judges straight away, took her mask off, but if she just took a minute to breath and do nothing else, maybe none of this would happen.

[JPF]

Hello,

As every countries participating to the World Championship in Ibiza, Italian team knew the AIDA rules applied very well. Some of that rules have been defined by Italy thanks to a system of democratic votation.
Therefore they knew perfectly what are the mission of the judges during the competition : if a problem occurs (samba and blackout) the 2 judges on the attempt (for static) write they have seen a problem and only at the end of the competition, during the judges meeting, the tape with all the problems is shown to ALL the judges and only ALL the judges make a vote to decide yes or not there was a problem.
So in our case, the decision is not only in the hand of the 2 judges.

If rules about the samba must be modified, let's talk about it together. We are now enough freedivers to take good decisions.

JP FRANCOIS
AIDA BELGIUM

[joefox]

JPF, the point is that... if the team that has won three world cups leaves AIDA competitions ....then WE got a problem.

As I said in my previous post, since I'm Italian I cannot be objective about what happened in Ibiza (also, I wasn't there).



But surely we got a serious problem here, a problem that concerns the very credibility of our sport.


Joe Fox

[JPF]

Of course we got a problem. And that's why we have to work together like in the past to improve rules for competition, rules for security, ... and not as we're doing now, like children, everybody with their own business. And I'm sure that if tomorrow we find the best rules ever realised, shortly somebody will come with new ideas that will make them obsolete. And that's how it must go : we have to make rules for the group and not for individuals. Discontinuousless evolution.
Sportively,
JP FRANCOIS

[joefox]

If we're aware that a problem exists, then I guess we've done half of the job.

As a lover of this sport, I hope to be able to support my national team in future world competitions.

JoeFox