CMAS World Championships

[OceanMan]

CMAS World Championships are being held in Italy these days.

One French athlete, Christophe Bruel, has been disqualified because he did several AIDA competitions this year.

I have also read that there are only 16 athletes left for the competition !

Can someone confirm this ?

 

[hteas]

How can CMAS be hosting a freediving championship? I thought they threw freediving out the window, requiring the formation of AIDA to continue the sport?
Howard

 

[spaghetti]

OceanMan, yes unfortunately Cmas does not accept any athlete who has taken part to Aida competitions. This comes as no surprise: that's the official and well known Cmas rule and policy. We all must hope that this ban will be lifted some day because it doesn't make much sense.
Hteas: the american Cmas commitee actually is not doing any freediving AFAIK, same as the local Cmas commitees of many other countries.
BUT, in many European countries, Cmas has been organizing many international comps in the last years and it's making some interesting progress towards the sport. They're only for dynamics, statics and Jump Blue, while CW and other deep freediving specialties are banned, but hopefully the ban over Constant will be lifted ASAP.
These notes are just FYI: I'm no Cmas man.

 

[JPPLAY]

Just to add to information about CMAS banning athletes. CMAS banned all the spearfisherman from the FIPSA World Championship from being allowed to compete in their events. I hate seeing bully tactics like this. Hopefully something better will happen in the future. Maybe the FIPSA will take off. I also don't see how CMAS can gain control on freediving competitions over AIDA but I know very little about the political environment of freediving competitions. Does anyone have an idea why CMAS thinks they can gain complete control?

 

[trux]

I wonder when will someone finally challenge CMAS legally. Maybe AIDA could do it, asking for huge compensations. Such bullying behavior would not be tolerated in any other normal business. Try imaging Microsoft (one of the best known bullies), telling you that if you want to use Windows, you must not install any other software than from MS. Well, they already tried similar tactics, and still try new ways to do so, but they were also many times ordered by courts to lift such policies, and were quite harshly penalized for them.

Some may tell that the best way is ignoring CMAS and boycotting their competitions - that they will realize soon themselves that they are shooting them into the foot. I heard such opinions on other forums. Well, that may be possible in countries where CMAS has no importance, no influence, and no power, but in Italy, or even France (although the French federation FFESSM which is a branch of CMAS, is much more tolerable toward AIDA), and in other countries controlled by CMAS, by boycotting them, you can get into real troubles - since they control spearfishing, instructor, and also scuba licensing, they are in position to drive you out into the illegal side, where you'll be forced to dive or hunt illegally, and won't be able to make any commercial activities related to diving.

That's a clear abuse of their power and monopoly position, and not only something that we should boycott - we should fight against it actively, and cause them a huge financial loss at a court to make them rethink it the next time, before they introduce another such bullying policy (this is not the first and only time I hear about bullying from the side of CMAS).

If AIDA brought a legal suit against them, I am pretty sure they would win the process without big troubles and could gain nice compensations. I highly recommend that the officials consult a lawyer about that matter - I believe that most lawyers will be quite excited to jump on it. If not AIDA, then even individual freedivers could launch a class suit against CMAS - finally by being forced to chose between AIDA or CMAS, they may lose the possibility of better exposure and loss of eventual sponsoring contracts, so suing for financial compensations is rightly in place.

 

[spaghetti]

Does anyone have an idea why CMAS thinks they can gain complete control?

Why? Because Cmas is the official world federation of UW sports inside the International Olympic Commitee. You may raise one thousands reasonable objections to this point, too many too mention, but yet this is the point.
--
Back to the starting question of the thread: just 16 atheletes running? No. I see 40 athletes in the Jump Blue finals (Men's gold medal: turkish Devrim Ulusoy. Silver, italian Michele Tomasi. Bronze: Lorenzo Hidalgo, Venezuela. Women's gold medal: Karla Fabrio, Croatia, who also took part to Maribor Aida worlds last month, so I'm totally puzzled ). Today and tomorrow it's the turn of Dynamics.

 

[trux]

Not sure, but possibly it is only a participation on AIDA competitions with depth disciplines that counts for the disqualification. At least I see it as the only possible explanation. Not sure if Karla did any such competition though (in Maribor there was no depth, AFAIK).

 

[Goran Colak]

Ok, here is the thing. I just arive home in Croatia from Bari and I was competitior there in apnea.

The ban for AIDA competitors is just for the same discipline, so in this case just DYN couse that's only thing that CMAS and AIDA both have. Both Karla Fabrio and me was DQ from DYN and culd not compete. No mether that we both set CMAS WR in DYN two month before that. So yeah CMAS sucks, they have DQ athlets from Venecuela, France, Mexico and us from Croatia... wery, wery frustrating and shity desicion... We will take that to the Int Olimpic Comete for shure, the Franch have already agree!

Yust to let you know, both, Karla and me ware haveing AIDA T-sirt on, all the time And manny people was heveing positive aditude to that....

 

[JPPLAY]

I am glad to hear that organizations will be taking their cases to the Olympic Committee. I wonder what the policy of the committee is towards this type of behaviour.

 

[Goran Colak]

Me to, but honestly I do not think that we will change anything.... we ware there, and that organisation and presendent Ferero have no interest at all to develop apnea and change the rule... We will try but there is little chanse for any progres... To be compleatly honest, there is big chanse for things to become even worse!

 

[spaghetti]

Yes in facts it will be a good thing if the IOC will asked to take a position in this situation. As a matter of fact, the world's strongest freedivers are out of Cmas competition and it's reasonable to say that this is not a good thing for the sport and for Cmas itself.
Meanwhile, the meeting has come to conclusion and, after Jump Blue, we have the newly Cmas world champions in Dynamics too.
Performances are below Aida wordls in Maribor, but still not bad:
Men's Gold Medal: Michele Tomasi, Italy, m.194,96
Women' Gold Medal: Natalia Babich, Russia, m.195,02
That's all folks

 

[shoutatthesky]

F--K CMAS. F--K IOC. Long live FREEDIVING for the joy of FREEDIVING. Stop the petty squabbles and get on with the greater good. Hats off to AIDA. They are the only one that seem to be doing Freediving any good.
Jump blue? What a joke:rcard

Right - got that off my chest.

 

[Daić]

Goran, do you know how many competitours and countries wer there? Where can I see the resolts?

Jure

 

[mgm]

CMAS - Apnée

 

[sanso]

F--K CMAS. F--K IOC. Long live FREEDIVING for the joy of FREEDIVING. Stop the petty squabbles and get on with the greater good. Hats off to AIDA. They are the only one that seem to be doing Freediving any good.
Jump blue? What a joke:rcard

Right - got that off my chest.

Thanks for venting
Apart from the many dashes and capitalisation in that post, I'd like to second this. Banning people for whatever they do in their spare time is ridiculous - CMAS might as well ban left-handed or red-headed people. (or left-handed redheads, for that matter :t)

This kind of stuff looks a bit like the boxing world to me, where there's about 48 World Champions™ at all times and people who know the phone number of someone in a different club get their pets tortured until they promise to forget that number and feel really bad about it.

From what I've seen, AIDA much acts like an organisation for competitive freediving. All the stuff taught in their courses points to competitive freediving and that is okay with me as long as I have the possibility to learn their stuff and am able to look into other things as well.

There is a still young and small organisation growing into the field of apnea, the IDIC - The Apnea branch is still in the process of taking shape and I think one can make a major difference there, that's why I chose to become IDIC Apnea Instructor. Let's see what happens there - I'm very curious.

 

[Goran Colak]

Goran, do you know how many competitours and countries wer there? Where can I see the resolts?

Jure

Results are on CMAS pages, mgm posted that before...

There was 41 competitior in JB and about the same in DYN, from about 8-9 countries... I don't know exatcly but you can count real number on CMAS results page...

 

[wizards]

CMAS don't give a damn about making their sports more competitive they only care about their self importance in the eyes of the IOC. You cant negotiate or reason with them they have it set up so their board of directors can do exactly what they like.

Believe me I know from first hand experience, I have worked with the Slovenian federation to try and get this ridiculous rule changed, but all to no avail.

When an organisation cares more about itself than the members it represents it makes certain it will never succeed.

The underwater hockey fraternity boycotted the CMAS games and only six countries were represented, all from Europe. Last year at the world hockey championships there were 19 countries from 3 continents, CMAS screwed them so now they are leaving and going it alone.

As I said earlier I have seen their lust for power and control first hand and all i can suggest is to stay well away from them.

Cheers

 

[trux]

Believe me I know from first hand experience, I have worked with the Slovenian federation to try and get this ridiculous rule changed, but all to no avail.

Did you try consulting some lawyer experienced with international and anti-trust laws? As I wrote above, I am pretty sure that the rule represents illegal business behavior, and that CMAS could be prosecuted and fined for forbidden business practices. Yes, I know that it is not a real corporation, but rather an association (not sure if it is a non-profit organization though), but it may not be important. A skilled lawyer would tell you better. I'd recommend that your federation consults one - the first consultation is usually free or inexpensive, so you do not risk any high cost for just that. The best may be contacting your local anti-trust agency, or asking at the Chamber of Commerce for help - they will be certainly able to tell you which agency or which lawyer to consult with a monopolist problem. Personally, I'd love seeing CMAS sued and fined for that, and for other screwing-ups of diverse UW sports. For example in France they do not allow UW rugby at all, telling it is too dangerous. What a bunch of old morons! (moderators: sorry for the strong words, but I realy consider CMAS harming the sport greatly - if it is not acceptable to keep such comments here on DB, please feel free to edit it out)

 

[trux]

PS: if you decide consulting a lawyer as I suggested, he will certainly ask if you or your federation suffered some financial harm due to monopolist restrictive behavior of CMAS. Make sure to put your arguments well together and try making some calculations. It is sure that CMAS, by forbidding divers to participate either on AIDA or on CMAS competitions greatly reduces the chance to find a lucrative sponsor, but it is certainly not the only economical harm it caused. Try to think about it little bit and putting some facts on paper before going to the lawyer.

 

[wizards]

Hi Trux, we have looked at taking them to at least the CAS (court for sport arbitration) but the cost and time constraints make this a difficult option. I don't disagree that we would have a good chance of winning a case but the time and effort needed is enormous and even if we did win they would just find another way to get at us.

I am also the President of the CMAS Underwater Hockey Commission (for how much longer I am not sure) and we have already had a precedent where we took them to the CAS. Jersey wanted to come and play in last years world hockey championships and when they tried to register with CMAS, their application was refused on the grounds that they did not have an Olympic committee and that they were part of the British Isles.

They have their own government, money, flag and laws much like Australia and Canada. Even the British delegate to CMAS told them that they were not recognised as part if Britain, but this was not enough the CMAS Secretary General said they were so they were not allowed to join. So much for the Olympic philosophy of sport for all (as long as your not from Jersey yo can play)

To cut a long story short we lodged the papers with the court it took over 8 months to hear and cost us $3,500 up front.

CMAS has a legal Commission made up of Lawyers that they get for free and are in their back pocket, they never argued the merits of the case. Their argument was solely based on whether we the commission as part of CMAS had the right to lodge an appeal. A further problem was that as CMAS is based in Rome their statutes say that any proceedings must be heard under Italian law.

In the end we lost the appeal on a technicality as they ruled that we did not have the right to lodge an appeal, our arguments were never tested. The one good thing is that the lawyers must have looked at our arguments because they awarded costs against CMAS.

So now the commission finds itself as the representative body of all the underwater hockey players without a right to question any decision CMAS makes. A position we find untenable.

A a footnote to this story CMAS are currently taking disciplinary action against me, not the commission as a whole who are the ones that make our decisions, just me. The message they are trying to make is clear and they will do whatever it takes to get anyone who stands against them. So this is why 18 of the 24 playing nations are leaving and starting a new world body.

IADA should capitalise on the stupid CMAS rules and vigorously promote themselves to take the members off CMAS. I suppose the point I am making here is that people know that if they stand up to be heard, they will have things done to them to get them out of CMAS in the future so most just shut up and tow the line.

But for hockey players we would rather stand on our feet than live on our knees.

Regards.