kind of.
There is parachuting and then there is skydiving, group skydiving, formations, skyboards, blah, blah. It is true though that it does take some balls whether or not the chute opens instanteniously or a good while after the departure from the plane. The same goes for all other sports and people looking to define their "extremeness" cling so strongly to their terms and lingo. I am sorry but freediving starts with snorkeling or a very close relationship to it. Funny the countries that started this sport don't make this big of a stink about the word game. In grece it started as a job a means of gathering sponge and pearls. For Italy it has been a means of fishing for many years and more recently a national sport. Only in English do people look make these crazy deliniations. If I go skiing and use short skies, rental gear and go really slow do I have to rename what I am doing? Maybe we need to rename "real" skiing so the great skiers don't have to be embarrassed by partaking in sport, sharing the namesake title "skier" with a true newbie like myself. Every little boy and girl, every fat pale tourist that snorkels is a potential fan and participant of the sport. If we want to see this sport grow lets be more accepting and see the potential of unifying the endevers and profit a little from it. If you guys are going to knock a guy for using short fins look at Topi and I bet his 71metres beats most of our potential ever with multi hundred dollar gear(fins,blah blah).
Most of your time on the bottom, the ocean, guess we will just have to tell all the champions from the Med. to give their medals back because they have been diving in a Sea not an Ocean and have been taking too long to breathe up and not spending "most" of their time on the bottom. I have seen so many "snorkelers" work their way through the water to the bottom. I think most people start calling themselves freedivers once they strap on some weights.. Greatest freedivers in the world are all of us pre-birth, think about that one for a minute. 9 month static/dynamic (depends on the ammount of kicking involved). Lets not get too macho and let the sport grow.