DNF in 50m vs. 25m pools

[trux]

The choice to make the DNF at current World Championship in Lignano in a 50m pool raised quite a lot of critics, and competitors worried their performances would be seriously negatively influenced.

I compared and analyzed the DNF performances at the WC2011 with Personal Best performances prior the championship. And I did the same for the last WC 2009 in Aarhus, which was in a 25m pool. If you are interested in the statistics and the analysis, you may see it here: APNEA.cz - Blog

 

[trux]

BTW, a nice thing on the 50m pool is that if you forget in the stress of the competition that you are in a 50m pool and not in the short 25m pool you are used to, you easily double your PB - that's what apparently happened for example to Ilia Biala in Lignano

 

[Simos]

Haha brilliant, bring on the 100m pool!

I've followed the debate Trux, but for me it's not so much on whether you can go further in a 25m or not, but on whether it would make sense for world records to be different depending on the length of the pool. (ie like swimming)

I personally think that given that freediving is at an early stage this would be an overkill but at the same time, if I were training to break the WR in DYN say in the next WC and then found out it was going to be held in a 25m pool, I'd be naturally disappointed to say the least.

Since I won't be breaking any world records any time soon (and same goes for most freedivers), I don't think in practice that many people are really affected by this. In terms of the competition, everyone dives in the same pool so it's a level playing field so shouldn't matter much.

 

[Simos]

One thing though that might help - if it was at all possible for competitors in such competitions to find out earlier what pool each event would be held in, perhaps people would have time to do some specific training and be less surprised so close to the competition.

 

[trux]

Well, there are still national records, and for many freedivers PB's are as important as WR's (when not more), so I think that the pool plays a role anyway. However, although there are certainly differences, the statistics seem to prove that they are much lesser than anticipated.

Doing separate records in 50m and 25m pools would be certainly an overkill, and I find it unnecessary (especially because I would have problems completing all the tens of thousands of past results in the database with the pool information). On the other hand it is true that the Italian federation FIPSAS keeps separate records in 25m and 50m pool (and I believe for DYN too).

 

[trux]

Haha brilliant, bring on the 100m pool!

Well, there are already a few:
http://forums.deeperblue.com/freediving-science/71255-oversized-pools.html?highlight=oversized

One thing though that might help - if it was at all possible for competitors in such competitions to find out earlier what pool each event would be held in, perhaps people would have time to do some specific training and be less surprised so close to the competition.

It is enough to look at AIDA's competition calendar, or look up the given pool in Google. Usually it is no problem to find it out at all. And usually indeed people do it. At least I do - I need to visualize my dive well in advance, and I also like to see how the pool building looks like, to get the "feeling" well in advance, to choose my "camping" place in the pool in advance, to see how much place there is for the preparation, etc.

 

[Erki]

Can you do similar analyses for DYN also? Was there improvement bigger than in DNF? If not then you are right.

 

[trux]

Well, I am a bit lazy, since it is not something done in 5 minutes, but perhpas later. Of course, anyone is free to compile the results together - they are all available online.