And our bid for the 2011 World Championships

[Stavros]

Hi All,

Since all the other kids are doing it I am uploading our bid for the 2011 AIDA Individual Depth World Championships to be hosted in Kalamata on September 2011.

I will not ask you to vote for us - just have a look at videos of past events and enjoy


YouTube - guillaumenery's Channel

See you all in Greece

Stavros Kastrinakis
Freediving Club Greece

 

[trux]

Yes, indeed, great proposal too. And the history of past events organized by your team speaks enough for itself.

 

[aris ioannidis]

Been to three events organized by Stavros and his team and they were all great! Good luck!!

 

[Herbert]

I have been to one event, which I was forced to quit in the middle of the competition because training dives and attempts were canceled by the organizer do to inadequate setup and low safety standard for the wehter conditions, 3 days in a row. Not to medtion to outrageous training costs, which were 3x as high as any other competition!
Competitors of this years event in Calamata (where the WC would be) complained about terrible food at the hotel.

Herbert Nitsch

 

[cebaztian]

Why is Greece as a nation having two different proposals, why arent they working toghether?


Sebastian

 

[Panos Lianos]

Hello Sebastian,

Stavros came to our board meeting of July 13th and asked if he could have our support (our "auspices") for his bid.

Before answering yes or no, a member of the board asked him "why not do it together with AIDA Hellas?". His reply was that he wants to have total control over the competition. I then personally proposed to him to be paid by AIDA Hellas and have the control, and he still refused. He also mentioned that there is no time for AIDA Hellas to put together a good proposal since the deadline is August 1st. I then contacted Pim and he sent an email to all interested parties that the deadline is September 1st.

Although Stavros made it pretty clear that he doesn't want to work with AIDA Hellas, we gave our "auspices" to his bid, since if we don't get to organize the competition, we don't mind if he does it.

So to answer your question, there are two bids to host the competition in Greece, but only one of them will be organized by the national AIDA.

 

[Chrillepille]

Herbert, can you be a bit more specific about the safety issue (since it is a really important issue)? Since it is almost 1,5 years since, maybe the organizer has had time to up the arrangements or maybe they will be addressed until next summer?

And really, second hand complaints about the food, is that necessary? I'm sure there are lots of people with first hand information willing to share if they deem it necessary. There is no need to badmouth.

 

[Stavros]

Dear All,

I am sorry that some people are trying to drop the level of this discussion... I am quite sad about this...

To make a couple of things clear :
Herbert came to the first international event I ever organised receiving the same information as every other athlete (athletes like Nery, Carlos, Molchanova) and somehow expected not to pay any fees since he was "Herbert". In the end he did in fact leave the event without paying any of his fees ... now he is trying to bad mouth a series of highly successful events in order for his sponsor’s and friend's (trygons) bid to have a chance... that is sad man...

Sebastian - to answer you question. Regarding my proposing an event under the AIDA Hellas flag rather than running one event together. I am a full time freediving instructor and organiser of freediving events. During the past few years I have built the infrastructure and have a team of people capable of running major freediving events. AIDA Hellas has experience running weekend duration national events in one location (Loutraki) based on the work of a various volunteers. In all the events I have run since I started organising depth competitions I always depended on picking the best people I could get for the jobs needed and paying them so that they understand that they are there working to offer the best possible service to the athletes attending. I consider mixing this team with several volunteers a sure way of compromising the end result ... Furthermore I consider that a World Championship event requires full time attention for many months in advance in order to make it successful. This is something I am already working on since July 2010 with meetings and negotiations with hotels, municipality officials, sponsors etc. I feel that collaborating with a team participating in this process only when their spare time allows cannot really contribute to the end result in any constructive way.

I am sorry that egos rather than what is best for AIDA Freediving is driving this discussion...

Sadly
Stavros

 

[alexsarasitis]

Hi guys, I am Alexander from Trygons.
I see Trygons was mentioned as a world championship organizer!? Our involvement is only in making freediving safety and filming equipment.
Aida Hellas has agreed to pay 50% of the costs for making the best possible safety systems. Trygons pays the rest, and after the Santorini competition, the equipment will be available for borrowing ( NOT rent, only transport costs and safety deposit) to ANY other freediving competition organizer.
That is the exact deal we have (10000 to 15000 euro, 6 months project) , a deal OPEN for other organizers too.
In fact, "apnea evolution" in Italy, has already build a version of the new counterbalast by their own costs and for their own use. They got from Trygons only preliminary drawings for free, and made it locally.

About Herbert not paying competition fees:
He was invited to participate in that event, for trying a variable weights WR. After 3 days training, I had to come there to do the safety diver, make a funny wooden sled for practice, bring boat for transport, and borrowed to the organization my O2 deco equipment. But unfortunately, on the end, there was also no sled camera and the WR attempt was canceled altogether.( a sled record is not valid without sled and bottom camera footage of the complete dive)
The rest of the event (place,food+accommodation,sea,climate,people, even the judges! ) was the best I have ever participated.
But , if somebody can convince us that Herbert owns fees , it will be payed- as always.

 

[Herbert]

Hi all!

My previous postings where a bit harsh, but I felt there urge to bring up some information people should know.
Ok, Stavros likes to mixup "facts" favoring his reality. Let me state some more facts.

Stavros called me and emailed me a dozen times to get me to compete at his event and bring some media.
I asked him for my expected costs for the entire event and the only thing he replied was 30 €/night for the hotel!

We had another dozed of emails and phone calls where he did not mention once any other costs.

After I dedicated myself to the event by announcing the WR attempts to AIDA. His response was, there is a charge (of 300 for fwt and 200 for other disciplines) for the attempts. I am happy to forward this e-mail to anyone, Stavros! However do to my commitment and good faith, I was willing to swallowed the extra costs, without even mentioning.

A few training days later where at 3 consecutive days, the Oxygen-setup was not installed, as discussed repeatedly and agreed on, Stavros approached me during dinner asking me for €2200 for 1 week of training only.

After I found out he was not joking, we had a serious talk. He pointed out that all the costs were stated at his website.
Well this might be true, but I told him that I did not look at it, which he knew! Saying everybody else paid, has nothing to do with the fact that he knew that I would not come to his event for that price. Why did he wait until the middle of the comp to ask me for money?

I asked Stavros personally for my costs from the begining. Even if he was to shy to tell me in my face, he must at least point me to the section of his website stating the costs. Why didn't he tell me about the extremely high training costs, while he did tell me about the minimal hotel and attempt fee? Well it is clear to me - his intension was to fool me from the beginning!

I still have a hard time understanding why anybody would/does pay €5000 competition-fee excluding food/hotel to Stavros.
Btw.: My first 2 No-limit WR cost 4000 including hotel and food.

Because he did not want to step down from his outrageous costs, I was forced to cancel. I still had to paid for my trip, hotel, food invited media and friends to his event and spend a lot of time and hard training for nothing. So if anyone was to pay, it is definitely Stavros owing me!

 

[sgnips]

In fact, "apnea evolution" in Italy, has already build a version of the new counterbalast by their own costs and for their own use. They got from Trygons only preliminary drawings for free, and made it locally.

Hi Alex, hi all,
i would just remember everyone that this new equipment is almost ready and fully functional
i guess it will be presented officially in Lignano next week and it will be used in comp for the first time one week later in Salina

it took a great effort for the AA and the AA Competition staff, but we are sure it was worth the time and money spent
many thanks to Alex Sarasitis, Herbert Nitsch and everyone at Trygons for their support
Alex, Herbert, i hope to meet you in Lignano

 

[Stavros]

Its funny,
you guys are really eager bad mouth me in order to make AIDA Hellas' case a bit better...

What's interesting that the only person thinking my events are horrible and so ridiculously expensive (imagine a 5000euro record attempt - wow I never knew I was making so much money hhahahahhahaha) is the one person that refused to pay their entry fee at the end of the event cause they thought the event would be free for them cause they are better than the average freediver attending and deserve special treatment... Everybody else keeps coming year after year (which probably means the rest of you out there are not very smart now are you ).

Anyway I wish all the best to everybody bidding for AIDA Depth Worlds 2011.

Happy diving and calm seas to all of you nice people out there

Cheers
Stavros

 

[mgiankos]

Dear all

My name is Manolis Giankos and i have participated in several competitions , national and international ones as a member of the greek freediving team and also as individual competitor (maybe some of you remember me).I only read the discussions are made in this forum when ever i have time (family,job etc), so usualy do not reply . this time after reading the posts that stavros and Herbert did i felt that i should spent some time to say something because i was present at this competition.Of course i can not say anything about Herbert's situation as i was not involved in this but i have something esle that everybody should spent some time to read .
That year that that the guys are talking about (2008) i was traing in order to participate in 2008 team wc . I wanted to have some competition dives so i decided to participate also in Stavros freediving meeting in sougia (i also wanted to support stravros ).Getting all the information needed from the website about the fees and the details, i saw that everyone who wanted to try sled diving and maybe try for a national record in the variable weight category the days before the competition,he could arange it with stavros (by paying the money that he was asking of course).By the way during this meeting there where set quiet a lot national records in this category .
When i saw it i thought i should give it a try (once that the money is not a problem for me ) and i called stavros . At this call my wife was present (on my side ) and 2 other guys from aida hellas that i know (and they told me later about it ) was present on the stavros side .
so one month before the event....
- Hi stavros... this is manolis speaking.
- Hi how are you?
- well ,I am thinking to come to your competition.
- Come there will be a lot of other guys too.
- Ok.I saw in your website that anyone that wants to do variable weight during the 2 weeks prior to the competition and maybe trying to set a record will have the chance to do it and i want to give it a chance .
- ffffffsssssfffffssssfffffssss (whistling for 30 seconds)
- what do you mean by whistling my friend?
- I can not give you my equipment to brake my national record ....
- All i am saying is that what you advertise for every one in your site , and besides that i did not asked something different than the others . I will pay as much as you describe in your site and no less .
- The answer is still no.
- By no you mean that noone will be sled diving?
- By no i mean that only you can not dive with the sled .
- Ok then i will thing what i am going to participate at all .


After giving it some thought finally i went to the competition and i did fim,cwt,cnf. I went there with my family and we spent some days to travel around Creete also after the competition .

Just to give some more information in order to understand better at that point i had all the national record in cwt,cnf,fim,dyn and i had never tried official attempt in sled diving ....

Of course I can prove everything that i write and i am sure that some people in here can say about me if i am a serious guy or not .

Manolis Giankos,Greece

 

[Stavros]

And this is relative to the Bid for the 2011 World Championships in what way exactly?

If only the AIDA Hellas board had spent as much time in their Bid as they are doing on PR to get athletes to bad mouth my events...hahahahhaha

Loads of Hugs to all of you !!!
Stavros (having a great time in Santorini )

 

[mgiankos]

The relation between all these and your bid for the WC is called Athletic spirit. Since we are talking about the championship we should consider fair play, athletic ideology and seriousness as given.You have proven with your attitude all these years that you have nothing of these.

 

[B-J]

This (saying no to Manolis` sleddiving) is something I would expect in many other sports but not in freediving though. The competitions I`ve been to have showed me that freedivers are not like other athletes. I`m a 100% sure that if I lost my noseclip in a comp., some of my competitors would lend me one of theirs. (And I would do the same.) This is something that many freedivers appreciate and I would do alot to keep the competitions like this. If the organizer doesn`t have the same "athletic spirit" this might make an end to this great community.
Bjarte Nygard

 

[spaghetti]

Couldn't we please quit the lynching and stay on topic?

Hi All,

Since all the other kids are doing it I am uploading our bid for the 2011 AIDA Individual Depth World Championships to be hosted in Kalamata on September 2011.

I will not ask you to vote for us.

Stavros Kastrinakis
Freediving Club Greece

The topic of the discussion is quoted here above. Likes and dislikes are welcome for the sake of debate, but please no personal attacks.
Deeperblue has its rules:
Argue: yes
Complain: yes
Personal attacks: NO

 

[hoory]

Hi all I've just returned from 2 weeks in Greece and wanted to say that I enjoyed both weeks very much the first with AIDA hellas in Loutraki the second with Stavros in Santorini. After reading these comments The bid for the 2011 world championship seems like the run for the U.S elections with a lot of dirty politics. I just hope that once the venue is chosen you guys put all this shit behind you and move forward together because you have great freedivers in Greece and I was very impressed with the way you guys run and organize events.

 

[aris ioannidis]

Hello all, i agree with Yaron. I also attended both events; they were great and i am sure that both organizers will succeed in a great championship! All this quarrel sadens me and I hope you work together once the decision is made.

 

[blue fins]

Hello Everyone,

Im not usually fond of forums for communicating, but I noticed this thread going up and down and I just wanted to take a quick moment, for what it's worth, to vouch for the integrity of Stavros and his team and the very high standard of competition I have always found them to run.

I would not dream of speaking for anybody else or the experiences they may have had (although I think private matters should be dealt with face-to-face where possible, especially in business), but the last 2 International depth competitions I have attended organised by Stavros, I found to be sensibly scheduled, where much effort had been made to provide an extremely relaxed environment for the athlete, where they're able to thrive and concentrate on performance. Importantly, I have found the safety and equipment to be of the highest standard I have experienced in competition anywhere. This directly led to me feeling at ease in training and on competition days, and anabled myself and a number of my compatriots from the UK, an exceptional opportunity to achieve success in our freedivng.

We have been very happy with accomodation, which is comfortable and close to the dive venue, avoiding long or uncomfortable journeys to the dive site and giving us more effective recovery time. The food was very good and didn't give us problems with getting ill.

So all in all, I have found them to be very good value events that have a great atmosphere, attract many very good athletes and accomodate both World record holders and developing athletes side by side without either taking priority.

As in all things, all of the bids hold both strengths and weaknesses and I wish them all good luck for their applications.

Best,

Liv Philip
UK Freediver.