COMPETITION FREEDIVING: HARMING OUR SPORT?

Adam Stern said:

PJB,

Please detail your experience in Competition Freediving as a competitor, a spectator, a judge or a safety diver. What you have described sounds extrodinarily illinformed as does your suggested remedy for the current 'situation.'

Click to expand...

Dear Adam (and mermaidgirl/Carla),

I haven’t had time to reply till now, sorry. Where to start:

1. Adam, I’ll answer you about what ‘qualifies’ me to broach a discussion about the subject later, but we’ve actually met and I’m familiar with your accomplishments. You’ve also written eloquently on apnea-related matters. With respect, your question is not only off subject but a transparent Trojan Horse - bait you're hoping I'll take so you can launch the tired old defense raised by ‘special interest’ groups against external criticism - the ad hominem attack. But this is a good-faith, open forum discussion designed to shine light on a subject that clearly bothers many. Shooting messengers won't help. Readers able to put ego and emotion aside for a moment will note the essence of my posts is that A) hard evidence suggests apnea competition seems to be regressing rather than advancing in its aim to project 'the apnea gospel' into the public sphere. Recent incidents, whatever their individual origin, make this a simple, objective fact. B) an internet timeline of discussions show that both AIDA and its competition clique have collectively failed to deliver on a series of promises, stretching back years, to ‘clean things up’ – yet DESPITE this the drive to take competition into the mainstream continues unabated. Then C) we can argue the details but I claim the causes INCLUDE organizational deficiencies, competition format and competitor attitudes. This, and the technical evidence for non-linear outcomes in inputs vs outputs that keeps catching your ‘most knowledgeable’ clique unawares. The prospect is binary Adam: apnea either is, or is not, ready for the Big Time. So is it? Note my subject heading had a question mark in it; it wasn't a statement. However, I have a question for you and Carla: please tell me what ‘special knowledge’ I need to possess before either of you will permit me to conclude that, when others tell me they shy away from apnea because of what they see in competitions, they actually mean it?

2. Let’s move on. Take a quick stroll down apnea-internet lane and right out the gate you run – repeatedly - into a standard narrative that freediving is 'the 2nd most dangerous sport after wingsuit base jumping’. Its even repeated on a site called ‘kidzworld.com’! Tell me, do you think this is true? I'll assist you with the answer: it's irrelevant. If it’s on the net it’s true thanks to the Facebook/Twitter culture, and good luck convincing the media and public otherwise. The deeper question is: does competition diving, as currently executed i) amplify or ii) improve this (false) perception?

3. Some commentators on this thread have sought to imply things are 'OK' by simply dividing Nick Mevoli's death by a large number of ‘successful’ dives. This is an error of logic quite common in risk assessment. To illustrate, a fire chief once told me: ‘If you haven’t had a fire for 20 years, it just means you’re 20 years closer to your first fire. It comes down to WHY you have the fire’. Translated: AIDA’s safety record was built on sand because at the extreme end apnea outcomes remain opaque; the MMA-style culture of competition and non-linear, asymmetric outcomes was the gun, Nick Mevoli the trigger. Never forget that every blackout or severe samba is, in effect, death cheated. No other sport has this exact dynamic.

4. Since you're spoiling to second-guess my 'credentials' let's first have a look at what more 'knowledgeable' people than I have had to say on the areas of concern I've raised:

i) On the risks that underlie current competition CULTURE & FORMAT:
WILL TRUBRIDGE (Outside Mag 2012): "It's like playing poker. You're playing the other divers as much as yourself. The hope is that your foes choose a shallower dive than you can do, or that they choose a deeper dive than they can do and end up 'busting'".
NPR USA, 2013: "(Sarah) Campbell and other blame overly ambitious competitors who have seen others return from death unscathed, wrapped in a cocoon of safety divers and medics".
NPR RADIO 2013: "Squeezes are common in free-diving. Judges and safety divers describe athletes surfacing, posing for YouTube and then ducking behind a buoy to spit up slicks of blood flecked with white body tissue".
MIGUEL LOZANO (Freedive-Earth.com 2015): "(The rush) is the main problem I think in freediving - there is a rush to get objectives so fast, you lose a little bit the essence of the sport. I think once your only goal in freediving is numbers, the game is over so fast: You do world records or you black out".

ii) On AIDA's 'Readiness':
NPR USA (2013): "But (Sarah) Campbell also criticizes AIDA, the organization that governs competitive free-diving. She says the group isn't proactive enough in publishing accident reports".
KIMMO LAHTINEN (NPR USA 2013): "The organization is victim to the paralysis of an all-volunteer organization that's run democratically". (PJB: in organizational terms this approach is great for talking ABOUT problems, not solving them).

iii) On Blackouts & Lack of Control:
BILL STROMBERG (New Yorker Mag 2009): "It's about how well you know your body."
CARLA SUE HANSON (Outside Mag 2012): "Rules are set up to ensure that, through the whole dive, the diver is in full control. That’s what competitive freediving is all about: control". (PJB: Where's the evidence then?)
SEB NASLUND (Outside Mag 2012): "Blacking out is like shitting yourself. It's an embarrassment to yourself and others".
MIGUEL LOZANO (freedive-earth.com 2015): "I think that somehow it looks like we’re going back a little bit to the CMAS thing and with the media and everything you can’t have people just blacking out and blacking out and then ok I make it you know? Maybe it’s not the best example".

Adam, are these references suitably 'informed'? If not I could offer others. The 'net is awash with similar opinions.

Now to answer the question you directed at me: Despite a recent opportunity to assist in competition as a safety diver I elected not to get involved - for all the reasons described. I've also spent quite a bit of time in the company of competition athletes, and draw several of my opinions from direct conversations. More importantly, I qualified as an AA instructor alongside you. You might then recall that, on our course, any candidate that blacked out or even had a samba was disqualified because of Pelizzari's argument that: "a diver who can't demonstrate sufficient knowledge of and control over their own body can't teach the sport to others". You seemed quite happy with this philosophy then. Is competition exempt from this value system? Why? Personally, and after 3 decades of trying to kill myself via an assortment of other adrenaline sports, I've elected not to dive at or near my limits. That's my choice. But I repeat: I fully support maximal efforts at the cutting edge of the sport, just not in mass competition. Not yet. And I have as great a stake as anyone else in our sport's overall health.

So Adam, in the final analysis I think rational people can agree that there are problems with, and not a little discord within, competition diving. Thing is, competition represents just a fraction of the sport but casts a VERY big and (too) often negative shadow over the activity as a whole. The public image and reputation of the sport belongs to all of us, not just an elite clique. I can't wait for the day competition divers demonstrate greater humility in how they approach their responsibilities and yet, ironically and despite all the negative publicity, the sport is growing. This is a good thing on one hand but it also means that, very soon, even more competitors will be lining up to chase numbers, play 'poker' and spit blood behind the buoys & bushes while AIDA wrestles with 'democratic volunteerism' and the challenge of shoving its competition agenda into the limelight. I'll leave you with a final quote; it's by someone you know: "I'm glad the sport is becoming more popular, but I'm also concerned amateurs do not assess the risks properly" (Adam Stern, 2015).

Rik said:

Well, I was a bit disappointed that the discussion at the FB page didn't take off, but perhaps the original article did require some rephrasing.

The physiology of freediving is pretty wel known, a accident like that of Nick was predicted several years earlier, and we have been very close with similar accidents to a fatality where the accident was just not severe enough to kill someone. The anatomical changes including the pathological remodeling of Nick's heart was also predicted in one scientific paper. There is no surprise there either.

However, no one seems to be worried that this change is linked to pulmonary hypertension, which can be fatal as a disease. If I would be a freediver suffering from lungsqueezes, I would have myself checked for PHT.

I also would agree that the mentioned statistics are deceiving, because we don't keep proper statistics of black-out and lungsqueezes on high risk (NR/WR) dives. Somehow AIDA also decided not to keep track of BO's and LMC's after 2005 when the surface protocol was modified. It was predicted that this decision would increase BO's and LMC"s and risk-taking behaviour, and while we don't have the official statistics, the signs are clear. 5% BO's and 5% LMC's prior 2005. 30% BO's are now not a surprise and we have no proper statistics on LMC at all.

So, if the risks are known, why are people taking risks? It seems that a lot of freedivers suffer from "Summit Fever". When climbing mountains, some people choose to go for the top, even if the weather is bad, the timing is bad and they don't have the equipment or the training to survive. In my experience, especially people like Nick, who are aspiring national champions with a tight budget, are quite susceptible for this kind of behavior.

In competitive freediving, there is this tradition that competitive freediving is a Zen thing to do. Most of the older freedivers will remember the image of Jacques Mayol, meditating and doing yoga prior his world record attempts. But not many freedivers realise that he got severe black-outs during WR-attempts.

This is a example of the cultural cognitive dissonance in competitive freediving. The fact that you do meditate and train physically hard doesn't change the risk deep diving can cause on short and long term. Being a yoga or meditation guru doesn't protect yourself from doing foolish dives and harming yourself.

Currently, the idea persists that competitive freediving is a safe sport, and you are self to blame if you hurt yourself. Freedivers do not report their injuries because it affects their ability to dive and it would affect their self-image and their image towards others. There are a lot of stories of freedivers who have finished their competitive freediving career after sustained chronic health issues, but don't want to come forward with it, to the public or other freedivers.

With the knowledge on acute and chronic lung injury we need to change the idea that competitive freediving is a safe sport. We need to accept that high level competitive freediving *will* damage your health, just like for example competitive boxing and advanced freediving can be just as lethal as high altitude climbing. If we accept this for a fact, we could start with the necessary precautions as learned from these kind of activities.

Click to expand...

Dear Rik,

Nice post, and another 'QED'.

Just one clarification that I seem to be struggling to get across. My position is not that the medical fraternity lacks understanding on freedive physiology per se. Rather, it is that there is a school of thought in freediving and the literature which holds that talent, physiological adaptation to training and ultimate performance are highly individual, and thus somewhat non-linear and variable. Exhibit A: Cyprus 2015 where a third of the elites hit a brick wall on a single day due to changes in ambient conditions and dive times. Whatever else it may also be, the word 'opacity' springs to mind. And thus the question: can a sport subject to non-linear, potentially lethal and visually disturbing outcomes walk alongside other sports in a social media driven world? Well, the answer is of course that it can - but should it? And at what overall cost?

Keep Well

Mullins said:

I think freediving suits competition quite well. Easy to measure how good you are (depth / time / distance are kind of relevant metrics...) I focus very much on numbers and find the "people are doing it for the wrong reasons" stuff I hear now and then really pompous.

Will Trubridge did a 'live' (well, lagged by a few minutes but essentially live) record attempt on NZ TV last year and blacked out near the surface. Made for good, tense viewing actually - wouldn't be sport if nobody failed. Safety handled it well and the audience saw Will walking around looking disappointed but otherwise fine a minute or so later. If anything it saw more people turning up to clubs.

Click to expand...

Hi Dave,

I agree it 'could' someday. But I'm simply saying evidence shows its not 'ready'. The organisational frameworks don;t seem to be in place, the screening is not mature, the competitor culture is gung ho and the outcomes asymmetric. Will Trubridge walking around 'fine' is not an indicator that things are under control. He survived a blackout. Unless things change chances are this was just a filler till the next serious incident. And then we'll be treated to (another) bout of confusion and soul searching, as if it fell out of the sky. but ironically, you've offered an interesting and very relevant example. I got up early and sat next to my ADSL router so I could watch Will's record attempt live (bandwidth & all) even though I doubted he'd make it given the pressure he was under. He handled it exceptionally well and responsibly, as we'd expect from 'cool hand Luke'. But recall, I have nothing against record attempts: push as hard as you like, take as much risk as you can justify. Its when athletes of variable experience and talent (Pelizzari says its mostly down to innate talent at the cutting edge. Who knows) line up under current conditions that I think the wrong message is going out. Question: under the current system and approach, let's say AIDA's dream got realised, things went fully mainstream and sponsor and media pressures intensified, would outcomes get a) better or b) worse, and would the sport's image be easier or harder to sell to the broader public as a result?

Mullins said:

PJB - I think if you raised the stakes, you'd see a bit more pure game theory i.e. athletes' risk/reward calculations would be more rational and more consistent. I don't know where the failure rate would stabilize, but something like 5-20%? The athletes would be better trained and prepared, the incentives higher and more scrutiny of failure, so you'd have several guys/girls at roughly the same level doing roughly the same risk assessments. At some level of conservatism you'd be so unlikely to win that it'd be pointless competing, so everybody would have to take a degree of risk. But similarly I don't think you'd see many people significantly overreaching, which is (sometimes) a problem today. It would be more marginal stuff - momentary surface BOs, failed SP etc. So overall, probably better outcomes but I'm really speculating. I doubt it would turn audiences off.

Divebike - are you saying I dive recklessly? Love to hear your assessment of my level of conservatism.

Click to expand...

Dave you might well be right that things would improve. I don't know. But invoking game theory is actually quite justified here, so good on you because it introduces elements of variability based on incomplete knowledge between participants, and in one way explains (some of) the outcomes we're seeing. There is something in competition format and culture that is amiss, and needs looking at. Period. And if my post can trigger serious discussion or review rather than the usual self-interested, knee-jerk defense then, ultimately, it may help me sell the sport to a wider audience in my little corner of the world. After all, apnea is leading the way in and hypoxic/hypercapnic training and, whatever else, its core elements are going mainstream in sports science. Much to look forward to. Keep well, hope to see more PB from you in years to come (...not in comps!). Cheers

I kn

Mullins said:

They'll all be in comps, mate! At least the depth ones will be. I think if you banned comps and went with individual attempts instead you'd get essentially the same dynamic, just spread across greater time / distance and with fewer people due to cost. Divers would still be trying to one-up each other and taking calculated risks to do so. That's sport. It's hypocritical to congratulate people for performing well, then suddenly condemn them when they push that fraction too far and fail. And yes, everybody who trains does 'focus on the numbers' to some extent, even when they pretend not to. Everybody takes some degree of pain and risk in order to achieve time / depth / distance in apnea, which is why I dislike the sanctimoniousness sometimes directed at 'comp divers'. While they deal in bigger numbers, often their risk is lower due to all the support around them - it's lone recreational divers who keep dying. I'm probably safer doing 120m in Kalamata (that setup was great) than I am spearing fish here at home, even with a buddy. I do think it's fine to tell the reckless comp divers to pull their heads in however because that's not fair on organizers or safeties.

There have been comps in which quite a few divers have pushed too hard and organisers have messed up. Remember though that there are many comps around the world that are excellently managed with lots of clean dives.

Speaking of knee-jerk crap, let's hear more about my attitude from Divebike...

Click to expand...

Of course they will Dave! But for my refusal to ever use emoticons, you would've seen the attempt at humour. OK we've flogged this horse to shreds, but I'll leave you with a last riposte: a) note my premise is that apnea is not quite like other sport; the underlying meaning of 'failure' is more significant, and more troubling to non-divers and a wider public audience in general and is currently counter-productive and b) you comment that 'there have been comps...' - yes, the sport's flagship event where over a third of the competitors blacked out. To me this implies a lack of personal and organisational risk assessment; a lack of 'Control', and this is the perception I hope AIDA will address. No more, no less. Can a 'democratic, volunteer-based' body deliver?

As for Divebike, he has a point but I picture him in front of his PC wearing a gum-guard and headgear with a box of pocorn, spoiling for a scrap. Maybe HE should try competition diving... (I jest)