There was just an important milestone achieved by the French freedivers - the number of French members of Apnea.cz broke the
500 mark. Their lead is big since the beginning, but with the time, the distance to the second USA (327 members) and the 3rd Czech (268 members) became abyssal.
While posting some related stats to the French forum, the difference in success rates popped out. The registration test is rather strict, not letting in anyone without sufficient theory basics, hence avoiding potential accidents when using the database of exercises, but also completely eliminating any kind of spamming. So although the total number of registered is 5700, there are now only 2400 successfully completed registrations. That means a success rate of 41.9%.
What is interesting is the difference between the first France with the success rate of
51%, and the rather miserable
36% of the second nation, the USA! That's a serious gap, and perhaps the US freediving, spearfishing, and diving clubs, and organizations should try to make more edification and publicity to improve the level of theory knowledge and safety awareness.
The low success rate of the USA is unique among the nations with sufficiently big member base. It is only comparable to Greece (37%) and Spain (27%), where the main culprit is the language barrier, though. So the only worse nation among the first 30 nations, is Swiss with only 32% of success rate. I'd tell it is rather surprising, because they have no language excuse (all of them understand sufficiently either French or English), and one would expect more from the resident country of AIDA International, and a nation with several excellent freedivers.
