Does AP make sense for pool competitions?

[Jouskari]

Of course we could adjust and make the penalty-system better than today, there is plenty room for that. The evolution of our sport is going quick forward and our rules have to follow. But I most say that the AP is heavily needed for our depth-dicsiplines in the way we perform those competitions today.

Suggestion (repeating myself a bit here):

1. Keep AP system, as rules allow for randomization (3.3.11)

2. Limit total penalty for both pool and depth "short" dives to 2 points (So even if you turn/surface 15 m short you "only" get - 2 points plus the normal reduction). This rule is very important in the Team WCs where you might have athletes bursting eardrums or blacking out just because of the AP. (11.5)

3. Change penalty for Rope (line) or Pool edge grab to - 1 point (now 5 p). Again - Safety first. (11.6.3 & 11.6.4)

These changes would require almost no effort to change in the rules as no rewrite would be required.

 

[trux]

Then I would like to end with saying that I favor a system that keep a perfect record of all BO's in all AIDA competitions...

Yes, I agree with that. Until now there are still organizers or judges who sent the results with incomplete data, with no reasons for DQ specified. That should change from now, since AIDA has the automated system for collecting the results, and the performance outcome is a mandatory field. However, it only depends on the judges/organizers whether they fill it correctly, so having the record perfect depends on their will.

In the apnea.cz ranking I use a "black card" for distinguishing between a regular DQ and a BO - perhaps it could be an option for the competitions too, since it would make it easier and quicker to record the outcome.

BTW, recently I helped collecting some statistics about BO for a French medical doctor who is working on a study of this topic. There are some interesting numbers especially when comparing AIDA and FFESSM, where the BO and LMC are not only disqualificative, but they also lead to a ban from the entire competition plus an additional ban of up to several months from other events. Although the records of the BO are not perfect, it is clear that there is a huge difference - at AIDA the yearly average BO rate in the last three years (where the BO records are relatively reliable) is around 3.6%, while at the FFESSM it is around 0.5%

 

[Goran Colak]

Hello

I honestly do not see problems with AP in competitions, for me it is one more thing to look for strategically and that add some excitement in competitions. But maybe the best thing will be to make the starting order by the current and the past year PB of all competitors. That will mean that the best will go at the end, and you will have interesting and even media frendly competition becouse you will know when will all the best dive and you as an athlete will not be able to manipulate the starting order by announcing low.

If you can not handle the pressure, well I am really sorry. You are not having fun at big competition, oh that just brakes my hart in half... Newsflash the big competitions are stressful, are not fun for athletes who are trying to win or take a medal, and that is the point! There you can see who is the best, who can handle the pressure and who is the strongest both mentally and physically. Its not fun... this is not a birthday celebration of your nanny for god sake. It's a world championship! Suck it up.

And another thing, in my book the correct penalties are: Grab -2p (or no penalties at all), short on AP -0,5p per meter (so 10m short dive will cost you 5m or 2,5p). Remove the PBM rule. And the 15sec protocol for pool is to long, it should be 10sec or at the best 12sec. If you can not do it in 10sec you are fas from being clear and controlling the dive. Sorry but that's a fact.

 

[Simos]

I see your point about stress and world championships Goran but again as mentioned above, i don't really understand if you removed the starting order by AP (to which I agree) what will be the meaning of AP?

Given that there is a penalty if you fall short of AP and no reward/difference in starting order if you announce a big AP, wouldn't everyone just announce 1m AP? Why would anyone risk announcing any realistic AP and risk having a penalty?

Also while I see your point about pool competitions, I still think that Eric's point about depth competitions is a valid one or at least worth discussing. Freediving (WC depths) is not exactly like swimming and other sports in that there is a significant risk of injury so if athletes end up running unnecessary injuries or putting themselves in more risk because of the rules, it's worth talking about.

Many sports (eg F1 racing etc) have to amend the rules to make them safer for the participants regardless of the fact that cars could be faster..

 

[Mullins]

If you can not handle the pressure, well I am really sorry. You are not having fun at big competition, oh that just brakes my hart in half... Newsflash the big competitions are stressful, are not fun for athletes who are trying to win or take a medal, and that is the point!

Yep. Competitions = stress, no way around it.

 

[Simos]

Yep. Competitions = stress, no way around it.

There has been a way around it for thousands of years :friday

 

[efattah]

If you can not handle the pressure, well I am really sorry. You are not having fun at big competition, oh that just brakes my hart in half... Newsflash the big competitions are stressful, are not fun for athletes who are trying to win or take a medal, and that is the point!

Maybe 'no fun' is the case for the people trying to win, but what about everyone else? Development of the sport is not about the top 10 athletes, it is about the other 10,000.

If we took a lower stress approach, there would be a higher retention rate of competitors, and today we would have 10,000 active competitors instead of 1,000. This would also increase the number of top level competitors. In that case, with 10000 competitors, it would have taken 300m just to qualify for the world championships...

Besides, more competitors, more interest = more sponsorship, more TV, more money for the top athletes.

 

[efattah]

Maybe Trux can do a statistical analysis of 'retention rate' of competitors. For example,

#1 total number of different athletes who have ever competed in a competition (2000-2011)

#2 total number of athletes that are still actively competing (i.e. one competition in last 12 months)

 

[Goran Colak]

Maybe 'no fun' is the case for the people trying to win, but what about everyone else? Development of the sport is not about the top 10 athletes, it is about the other 10,000.

Besides, more competitors, more interest = more sponsorship, more TV, more money for the top athletes.

Well I think you got it a little bit wrong. Development of the sport in general requires a large number of active freedivers, and a large number to cut the selection from. They do not need to be active competitors, and for sure the stress lever from the current AIDA rules is not the reason someone will skip the competition if they have any competitive spirit.

And for the last, no, more top athletes = more TV and sponsorship, no one wants to watch people having bath in the Olympic pool, people wants to see big dives and big performances. You watch 100m final race at Olympics, not the first round of qualifications, and there even in the first round you have excellent athletes. In freediving, well there are a few... in best case.

 

[Haydn]

Suck up the stress at comps........I dont think so. It sounds OK coming from one of the best, but many competitors at World and National comps may still be competing in only their first second or third comp. We are all very much amateur and stress is unhelpful and can hinder best performance. Comp organisers should do their best to remove areas of stress and the AP is one of those areas.

The best way I found to relieve the stress was to ensure the dive had the possibility of being the best dive ever, if I felt like it. If my prep went wrong or other factors meant the dive was unlikely to be the best ever, well that didnt matter. What really bothered me was having to set the depth the day before and the vibe at the time was to set it at a depth you new you could do, to get rid of the stress. That to me was stupid. I reckoned depth should be set 5 or more meters deeper than your best. You could then dive with the knowledge you could do your best dive ever if everything went well or turn early. There was no stress. I reckoned the stress was caused by deciding the depth and worrying whether you might make it. So, if your depth is so deep you know you won't make it, you have no stress, you know for sure you will turn early. But heres the secret, as long as the depth is set much further than your best, you have given yourself the space to have your best dive ever. Remember at a big comp, you will arrive well trained, fit and ready to have your best dive ever. The organisation, safety and support will be tip top and geared for you to do your best.

Often depth of tag, seems never to be deep enough to allow your best dive. Maybe it equalled or a meter shallower. Getting the tag was too important. So, make the tag too far away, and you are then free. You know you wont be getting the tag, but you also know you have allowed yourself every chance of having a great dive.

It always seemed wrong to me to compete and set an easy depth, just to ensure there is no penalty. Get rid of the penalty.

 

[Simos]

More top athletes = more TV and sponsorship, no one wants to watch people having bath in the Olympic pool, people wants to see big dives and big performances. You watch 100m final race at Olympics, not the first round of qualifications, and there even in the first round you have excellent athletes.

It's a different subject to AP but it's quite interesting Goran - I don't think that more top athletes or bigger performances will attract more TV and sponsorship.

You did a massive dive (awesome!) in the WC - do you really think that if you had done 20m more it would have made that much difference to the popularity of freediving and hence the TV coverage and sponsorship? I don't think so - to all us 'mortals' these performances are already SO huge that it doesn't matter. All the current freediving records are already what the average Joe would consider 'superhuman'.

Do you really think that anyone can comprehend what it means when Usain Bolt does a big performance? I think not - if he was turning up all serious, running 100m with no competitors next to him and going 0.03s faster than last time he ran, I am sure it would hardly be exciting or worth watching.

I think what sells and gets TV coverage are (sure there are others):

1. How popular is the sport with the viewers? More fun = more freedivers = more viewers = more $$$

2. Drama - could be an athlete that is eccentric, someone who's a superathlete compared to the others, a great rivalry and so on.

3. Action-packed, fast-paced competition, easy to understand rules

4. Other 'show' factors like the athletes' bodies etc (sounds silly but I don't think it is)

5. How well the general sport/athlete image fit with brand strategies

6. New records

Anyway i'm a bit off-topic

 

[trux]

Maybe Trux can do a statistical analysis of 'retention rate' of competitors. For example,
#1 total number of different athletes who have ever competed in a competition (2000-2011)
#2 total number of athletes that are still actively competing (i.e. one competition in last 12 months)

Yes, you can find it all at Apnea.cz here in the growth chart: APNEA.cz ranking

As you can see the total number of competitors in the database (after removing duplicates) is slightly above 5,000. The yearly retained number is growing, and slowly approachoes 2,000. The data for 2011 is reduced mainly because I am still missing results of many competitions that organizers did not sent - APNEA.cz ranking - missing competitions - 2011 (24 missing past competitions from 2011), and some more are still coming in the remaining next months. I believe that at the end of the year, the numbers will preserve the growth.

It is interesting to note that almost 1,000 (practically 1/5) of the competitors are French: APNEA.cz ranking - France
Unfortuntely I miss results of French departmental and inter-club competitions, because it is impossible to find their results. The French competitor number could be 50% higer, or perhaps even more.

The numbers of Italian competitors would be quite high too, and at least double of their current counts, because they have I believe five or six age and performance categories for each gender, but I am adding results only from the top categories (from the Elite category, and sometimes from the 1st and 2nd ligues). So in reality, there would be almost 1000 Italian competitors too: APNEA.cz ranking - Italy

With Spain it is even worse - I have only few of them in the database, but I believe the Spanish freedivers are numerous too. Same for Turkey - there are many CMAS competitors, but unfortunately I did not manage yet to get my hands on any results of their local competitions. It is similar for Nord African, Latin American, and Asian countries - I know there are also competitors (mostly CMAS), but finding the results is a challenge.

So in total, there may be more than 10,000 competitors who were active in the last decade, and over 2,000 in each of the last few years (possibly close to 3k recently).

However, as Goran tells, the most important is the member base, where you can recruit competitors. In the French clubs there are countless freedivers who perform much better than average competitors, and some of them even better than those at the top, but it is impossible to bring them to a competition. And many others do freediving just for fun, or as a physical or social activity, and have no intentions to compete. The usual ratio between competitors and non-competitors in clubs is 1:10

 

[trux]

Suck up the stress at comps........I dont think so. ... We are all very much amateur and stress is unhelpful and can hinder best performance. Comp organisers should do their best to remove areas of stress and the AP is one of those areas.

Actually not, Haydn. Stress is very much helpful for the performance. Probably much more in freediving than in any other sport. It triggers stronger diving reflex, and helps you getting further while consuming less O2. Yes, you are right it can still hinder the performance of those who chicken out mentally, but physiologically it is clearly an advantage. So I'd be rather careful in asking the organizers to remove all stress areas!

 

[efattah]

Actually not, Haydn. Stress is very much helpful for the performance. It triggers stronger diving reflex, and helps you getting further while consuming less O2.

This is only true for experienced divers. For new & intermediate divers, stress usually has a big negative effect. For me too, in the early days, stress had a big negative effect, now it has a positive effect for 'active' events (dynamic/cwt) and still has a negative effect for static.

 

[trux]

Well, I would not tell for experienced divers only. Perhaps knowleadgable is enough - I am far to be an experienced competitor, since I did only a handful of competitions, but I always performed way better under the stress of the competition than in the training. And that was the case since the very first competition. The difference was that I knew the stress was good for me, and I knew I had to watch out to avoid hyperventilation due to the stress. I did not let me disturb by the unknown feeelings the stress triggered. Hence I'd tell it is really helping physically to most people, as long as they do not give up mentally, and do not start hyperventilating under the stress.

You are right for the statics - it does not work much for me too, but on the other hand, it does not hinder the performance either - unlike at DYN/DNF, at STA it is about the same as in training.

 

[Mullins]

If we took a lower stress approach, there would be a higher retention rate of competitors, and today we would have 10,000 active competitors instead of 1,000. This would also increase the number of top level competitors. In that case, with 10000 competitors, it would have taken 300m just to qualify for the world championships...

I don't think the competitors you'd retain by making things easy & fun are the kind of competitors who'd push the standard up...

 

[Goran Colak]

do you really think that if you had done 20m more it would have made that much difference to the popularity of freediving and hence the TV coverage and sponsorship? I don't think so - to all us 'mortals' these performances are already SO huge that it doesn't matter. All the current freediving records are already what the average Joe would consider 'superhuman'.

Do you really think that anyone can comprehend what it means when Usain Bolt does a big performance? I think not - if he was turning up all serious, running 100m with no competitors next to him and going 0.03s faster than last time he ran, I am sure it would hardly be exciting or worth watching.

Well isn't this exactly what I have sad? No, 20m more on my dive will not make any difference, actually it will make it worse. But what will make it better is 20 people doing 250+ performances. And that is exactly what you are talking about if I'm reading it right. And putting 300 bath oriented people in the pool will not attract media, it will do quite the opposite thing. It is cute and nice and all, but in serious sports there is no such thing, you have to earn your right to compete on high level. And that is all, great, exiting, hard and beautiful...

 

[efattah]

I don't think the competitors you'd retain by making things easy & fun are the kind of competitors who'd push the standard up...

Well, there are certainly a huge number of high level athletes and even former record holders who no longer compete actively. Tom Sietas, Manolis Giankos, Seb Murat, Natalie Desreac, Natalia Avseenko, Peter Pederson, Sam Still, Juraj Karpis, Timo Jattu, Bevan Dewar, Brett LeMaster, Deron Verbeck, Ronald Laurens, Stig, Henning Larsen, Neugebauer, etc... (of these 6 are world record holders...)

Of these I personally know that LeMaster (previous WR holder) stopped competing because he didn't like the stress format of the competitions. Of the others I can only speculate.

 

[Mullins]

Somebody gave up on competitive freediving because of the competition format? Because he was upset about APs, penalties, start order etc? For real?

I think most people quit because of the inherent stress of training and competing at a high level. But that's just a part of sport. No competition format can make a 250m dynamic 'pleasant'. I don't imagine a marathon or a 400IM is much fun either.

 

[JennyWren]

I suspect that some (probably not most) competitor loss is due to two things

1) the sport being quite new and records getting snatched up already
2) the quick learning curve for many beginners

1) This sport is fairly new, only a few years ago there were several national records not even set, and the world records were going up by leaps and bounds because so few people were involved at an elite level. This made the sport appealing to a large number of new divers - hey, look, you can go compete as a relative newcomer and get a national record! Now that the competition is more stiff and the records are set much higher, that might be one drawing point that no longer exists to keep people competiting. Consider the competition for women's world records. It's pretty much all Natalia - there are a few others out there but for the rest of us it at least *seems* like there's no catching up. I know as a female Canadian freediver that it's unlikely I'll ever be able to get to a Mandy-Rae level, so there's less of a drive to go for records in depth.

I'm not saying that records are the only reason to compete, of COURSE they aren't the only reason (and shouldn't be). However, it's a lot harder to be a superstar in the sport than it used to be.

2) We've seen over and over again how people fresh into the sport quickly rise up the rankings. However, many of these people seem to plateau within just a couple of years, they might be beating their own national records but only by small margins and they might be reaching their own physical or mental limits. There's certainly an appeal as a new competitor to keep going to competitions, because at least for the first few it seems like you have a good shot at getting a PB almost every time. But if you haven't improved in your last 5 competitions you might not want to go anymore....it's expensive for one thing and can be disheartening.