help with magazine info

[fcallagy]

Hi,
Looking for help with regard to the usual journalistic stuff printed in the Irish subsea which I intend to reply to but want to get my facts straight first.
Quote from article about Carlos Costes record in May which was nice to see reported except for the last line which read....
" It is a regrettable fact that most of the dynamic apnia ( their spelling) record holders have died in attempts to achieve greater depths. "

Subsea no 124 Summer 2006

Forget the dynamic depths stuff, what I want to know if possible is how many recorded deaths have their being in competitions or record attempts. I am aware of Audrey Mestre but don,t personally know of any others. I know there other deaths and injurys from training etc and more so when training alone but in competitions or record attempts in any disciplines.
I wrote a small article regarding my Sett course for the same mag and they were happy to publish it. I should state its a voluntary magazine for a small community so don,t want to come down too hard on them but want to have my facts straight first.
Cheers

 

[trux]

I think the article is based on the number of freediving competitors and their deaths in movies. Almost every freediving movie has at least some dead competitors (when not right all of them), so if the journalist watched couple of the movies, he can certainly get his statistics quickly - he counts the number of actors playing freedivers, the number of fatal accidents, and the result is clear - 95.6% of top freediving competitors dies during a record attempt

I am not aware of real-life competitors, other than Audrey, who have died during a record attempt (though there might be some). However, it is true that the wave of freediving that was started with the pioneers of modern freediving like J. Mayol, and then especially after the movie Le Grand Bleu (The Big Blue) of Luc Besson, there was also a big number of fatal freediving accidents. That was caused by lapse of information and education. Diving federations were not prepared to handle the wave of interest and freediving clubs or courses only started to be more common in the last years.