New deep competition format? No announcements, just dive? Debate...

[chrismar]

In my opinion it is the other way around - insanely dangerous for deep divers but quite good for the newer competitors whose performances are more variable and don't involve narcosis or a prolonged sink phase leading them to overshoot.

Hmmm, you and your narcosis issues would probably be an issue with this format for sure! The problem for newer competitors though is that unless they're limited by equalisation, they may overshoot badly and end up blacking out quite deep or end up with lung squeeze. I'm not saying this can't happen in the current format, but a no-nomination comp may be more prone to it.

I'll continue following this with interest.

 

[Mullins]

I suspect newer competitors tend to be quite aware of their depth as the pressure gradient is pretty steep for their entire dive and they're often not sinking for long. But yes, they could also overshoot and it might get nasty when they realise how deep they've gone and start panicking.

 

[efattah]

If you dive with a Liquivision X1 with its bright OLED and huge numbers, it is very easy to quickly glance at your depth. If you dive with no mask or goggles, it is still possible to read the X1 if you put it close to your face, but much less practical. Clearly the diver would need some reliable method to determine his depth.

 

[Mullins]

I'm sure you could come up with a reasonably reliable way of judging depth. However the risk of overshooting would persist due to narcosis, and due to the fact that many divers (me included) like to 'switch off' once they hit the sink phase and just go 'till they hit the bottom. This is not dangerous if you are accurate in your nomination. Travelling at 1.5m/s I want to be focusing on equalising, not examining a gauge and trying to judge where to turn.

My response time is poor past 100m. I spend a lot more time than I think down there. In Sharm I remember stopping, pausing briefly and coming back up. But according to the D9 it was 9 seconds before I started the ascent...

 

[jome]

I agree with Mullins in the sense that for experienced and top level divers, the key is consistency. They would/should pretty much know what they're capable of, within a range of some 5m. With the exception of maybe Herbert (who I believe proposed this in Sharm), they'd probably end up diving just as deep, nomination or no nomination (and in the end I would guess Herbert too, it's hard to say when he's being serious).

But for intermediate divers, who have "good days and bad days",who's performance varies greatly and big gains can be made by simply "pushing it", this type of "no nomination" rule would give a big benefit - and also IMO a very big risk. The difference could be tens of meters and I don't even want to imagine what the dives would look like (kick, check cauge, kick, kick, check, kick...ok that's it, sprint to the surface)

It's an interesting idea but I don't think we're quite ready for it in larger scale, nor will we probably ever be. I think much more feasible and useful would be the kind of 5m "grace zone" that was in the rules briefly a few years back. Meaning, you still nominate a depth, you still "switch off and wait for the bottom" (which I too think is an essential part of deep diving - not needing to be constantly aware of the depth but simply waiting for the plate). But you don't get huge penalty for missing the target.

Or just adjusting the penalties a little. Maybe something like -1 for not bringing the tag and then -1 for every 5 meters missed?

But I do think this concept could work and even be fun in controlled situations...With a good understanding between the divers and the organizer, maybe as some sort on "invitation only" type of thing. And it would be great fun to watch.

Kind of like the static invitational in Monaco in 2005. That's why I also suggested "elimination rounds" with 2 divers starting simultaneously That was exciting to watch even through a very blurry internet video with weird time leaps.

 

[Billextreme]

Simo, the problem with the 5m grace zone was that athletes use this in the wrong way. They simply add extra meters to what already was extra... and this was not good at all. What we could do is to say that it's not allowed to announce more than +3m than your personal best from the last month of training before the comp. Or maybe we could stretch it to 4 or maybe max 5 meters.

have a nice day

/B

 

[DSV]

I've also had conversations with people about a new format for comps. And there are a few that will be announced soon I'm sure. Seb Naslund has documented a format that Willie We, Willie T, Seb and I brainstormed in Dahab which will be great fun.

Seb, if you have it still can you post it?

As of now the AP is a good idea and having a bottom plate for most athletes is an even better one. If you look at the ranking list as of today then add in the 3 divers that hit the 100+m mark at worlds, or sport caters to the "average diver". There are not that many people in the 80's and 90's so the majority are above that. To me this means that these are A) new divers just scratching the surface of there abilities, or B) veterans that haven't grasped the concept of equalization (such as myself).

Now to have an unlimited dive line will be un-nerving to most of those who are the newbies who rely on the plate as their safety blanket, but as "Big Dave the Love Slave Mullins" ;-) (love ya Dave) has put it, the narcosis at great depth will play a huge part in the reaction time in those who are more advanced, but still haven't achieved those depths on a regular basis.

I know having Liquid Vision X1 goggles and a huge OLED (shameless plug for Eric's products, great products by the way!) and many alarms to light and sound your way down is a great idea, but not many of us can afford such items. Not many of us can even afford the new D9.

As for safety, how are the safety divers supposed to safety properly when they don't have any idea how deep or how long the dives are going to take. We can't rely on the surface support to say "OK start the counter balance" and when it drops we all know (those of us that have used the system) how long and how many people it takes to get the counter balance moving. That is if the surface guys don't forget to release the added counter balance weights like what happened in Hurghada last year. Eric's system sounds great, but again it's a money issue.

I'm with Simo, we should reinstate the 5m grace zone! I know Bill you don't like the idea, but I don't believe that there are that many people out there that would abuse this format. There are always going to be those that abuse the system. For me the 5m zone was great back in Cypress when I couldn't equalize and turned a couple of meters short. I got full points for my dive, unlike this year when I've finally made it into the 80's in a comp and I'm only going to be in the 70's on the ranking list. That kinda sucks. So basically I'm being penallized for my inability to equalization and not my inability to complete the dive. The same goes for Dave in Sharm. He's done the 3rd deepest dive in history (correct me if I'm wrong) and he's being penalized on the ranking list for his equalization problems.

True we had 16 BO's in the WC's this year, but 13 of those were in CNF which in it's self is more strenuous than CWT. Until people wrap their heads around the fact that it is more difficult and they don't back off a bit we will continue to see plenty of BO's in that discipline, but the 5m zone may work there also.

Bill made a suggestion that we could not dive deeper than +3m than our personal best. So how do we know if the athletes are truthful about their PB's. There were announcements during the WC's that were as much as 22m deeper than they had gone before (again correct me if I'm wrong) and they were being honest. The only way you could go by a "true" athletes depth is by the ranking list and that could have been as much as a year ago and they may have surpassed that mark by many meters. Cases we saw in Egypt these athletes are keeping it quiet as to not let their competition know what they are going to announce in the competition.

So why not try the 5m grace zone again????????

Just my caffeine induced psycho babble. rofl

 

[BennyB]

I think it would be good to trial a 5m grace zone again, in fact before I finish my coffee I can't see why we need a penalty for not achieving depth at all (feel free to remind me of the reasons it was put in place).

I can't think of a sport where an athlete nominates what they are going to do beforehand and gets penalised for not doing it. For example - if I say I am going to run 100m in 11.3 seconds and then run it in 11.5s then would I be penalised for running slower than I announced, or would the fact that I did not beat someone who did 11.4s penalty enough?

In Constant weight, assuming appropriate safety an athlete should be able to dive as deep as they can and get rewarded for that depth.

I agree with penalties for things that the athlete deliberately does incorrectly, such as line violations and not grabbing a tag (well that's another debate). But I don't think an athlete should be penalised purely on performance based reasons, as their lack of performance is the ingrained penalty.

What I think is crucial to the argument is the fact that a competition is exactly that - you are competing against fellow athletes - may the best athlete win. Distances and times are irrelevent - competition is purely a "who beats who" format. As far as athlete performance goes, you should not be competing against rules, just athletes. The deepest, longest, fastest, strongest should be the winners.

For example, if I nominate 60m and do 60m, and Deron nominates 70m and does 70m, who won? Deron. If Deron nominated 70m and did 63m who went deeper? Deron did. But I would have more points despite not being able to achieve an ultimately deeper dive. In this case should my strategy always be to do comfortable safe dives and wait for others to screw their dives?

If they do not make that depth then the penalty is the fact that someone else went deeper. Like I said, in competition numbers are irrelevent, it's who beats who.

Does that make sense or do I need more coffee? Although I can't think of them now i'm sure there were good reasons to introduce a penalty for not making the AP. Unless they are safety driven reasons I can't think of why a 5m grace zone be adopted or the AP>RP penalty be abolished altogether.

Cheers,
Ben

 

[Billextreme]

More Coffee, Ben.

This is Freediving. Not running, swimming or x country skiing.

If you like to have AIDA's point of view, please ask this questions in the new AIDA Forum HERE.

There is a very good reason why it is like it is.

/B

 

[BennyB]

Noted, i'm off to Starbucks then (edit: no alternative BUT Starbucks where I work!).

Like I said, i'm sure there are good reasons why the rule has been in place, what i'd like to see is the athletes and interested parties put together a list of pros and cons and then see what is the best, safest way to proceed.

 

[strauss]

My response time is poor past 100m. I spend a lot more time than I think down there. In Sharm I remember stopping, pausing briefly and coming back up. But according to the D9 it was 9 seconds before I started the ascent...

Scary thought.

 

[DSV]

This is cc from the AIDA forums because not that many people have found the site yet.

Original post by Rik Rosken
Well, one of the main reasons I can think of why it is important to penalise not getting to your depth is to avoid that kind of divers who just "try" to set a record without knowing for sure if they can do it.

A 5 meter grace zone might look comfortable for those divers, but competition stress, depth narcosis and approaching a PB depth doesn't make a good environment to decide if you are capable to get to the end of the line and back in one piece.

It is easy to say that plan your dive, dive your plan and actually train for the depth might prevent that. For a lot divers, it works that way. But neverhteless, the increase in BO's and LMC's was sufficient to revert this rule. Normally the expected percentage for BO and LMC is 6% in the constant weight disciplines. In Cyprus 2003, this was increased to 10% BO's and 9% LMC's. This has demonstrated that there will be a significant group of divers who take more risks compared without the grace zone.

During the recent WC, and two years after the abolishment of the LMC-rule the figures on black-out have been doubled again (11%). The figure on LMC is unknown. I think we can expect that the BO's wil increase when we reinstate the grace zone (or don't penalise at all). So when we think about making the rules easier on performance, we need to ask ourselves what is an reasonable amount of black-outs on a competition anyway.

Rik,

The increase in BO's and LMC's in Cyprus in my opinion was not due to the 5m rule, BUT to the fact that this was the first "major" individual competition. If you remember Worlds was cancelled and all the participants that were going to attend Worlds and a lot that weren't showed up in Cyprus. If memory serves me there were 156 competitors, which is far more than any of the "World" competitions I've attended. This made it a kind of "go for it" attitude. Why not they had nothing to loose. Prior to this comp people were bound by their AIDA national to play it safe, competing under the "team mind set" of "don't f*#k it up for the rest of the team and dive conservative".

I don't know where you got your %'s and I don't know if you were adding CWT with CNF this year, but there were only 3 BO's in CWT and up until now there hasn't been any World Championships that had the CNF format.

So out of the 95 or so divers at Worlds this year in CWT do you think the 5m zone would have been a hindrance? I don't.

DSV

 

[alex_russu]

this is another copy/paste from AIDA forum:
Dear all,

I followed with interest this debate which seams reaching a dead-end before reaching its purpose (before giving a widely accepted answer concerning the deep competitions format)
I will try here to re-launch the debate and give it another chance to bring us an answer.

On this forum I could see until now 2 main approaches in your efforts to improve the deep comp. format:

1) an approach based on analytic & generally technical arguments (e.g. percentages of BO’s, differences between Cyprus & Sharm competitions ; grace zone of X or Y meters, etc.)
In the last post of today, dsv1 is concluding saying “I don't think there will ever be a right solution” and this makes me think that the technical discussion showed already its limits.

2) an approach based on ethics : safety is good, risk is bad. So we should keep the actual rules because they are safer.
The limitation of this approach comes from the assumption that “safety” is our main value. Whatever we like it or not, we have to admit that this is far from the truth. Active people (freedivers, researchers, etc.) put “independence” in front of “safety”.

In order to overcome the above limitations I would suggest renewing the debate with an approach based on symbolism.

For most of us, freediving is not the inertia of a given or a habit (it was not part of our life from childhood). It’s not popular as football or running to be introduced in our life by convenience.
It became part of our life through a process sustained by the symbolic power of “freediving” (this is the meaning that we built for it).
We are freediving because something about this sport ring a bell for us and we consider it a way of expressing/discovering our “self”.
It’s this symbolic power that acts on us when we’re away from the sea and makes us driving or flying for hours to go to the sea and dive instead of just going to a close gym to exercise.

To highlight the potential of the symbolism of “freediving” to set the format of deep competitions it’s my turn now to take the risk of an assumption: “we’re SCUBA diving to look around and we’re freediving to look inside”. This difference between internal and external performance would explain why we prefer freediving and we can’t replace it with any other sport. This is why we drive for hours to go to the sea instead of going for a more convenient sport (like running).

If my assumption is correct and most of you chose freediving like me, because it’s about yourself, the priority in deep competitions should be on self knowledge & self control.
So the value of the external performance, (the potential of making 5-10m more than your announced performance), should be behind the value of the self knowledge needed to estimate the depth you should announce and the self control needed to reach it.

The reasoning presented here is sustaining the actual AIDA rules but It is based on the assumption that we “freedive to look inside” and this makes it vulnerable.
If freediving has a profoundly different meaning for each diver, the symbolic approach I proposed here is useless; But if we can conclude on a common meaning (able to inspire all freedivers), then we’ll have the answer on our deep competition format.

What does freediving means for you?

 

[jome]

For me freediving is a sport as any other. I do love also hitting the near by gym and running in the near by woods as well. For me running a marathon is at least as much a "journey into self" as freediving. I also love being under water and combining that with "sport" is a real kicker for me.

But there are also different people and different motivations. Some run a marathon just because they think it's cool, or to impress others. Some for money, some for glory...And I would be lying if I said none of that makes any difference for me too. But mainly it's just to see if I can and if so, can I do it better. But I don't think it's for me to define what is a right or wrong motivation to dive. I don't think there is right of wrong, it's personal for everybody - there maybe safe and less safe though, and I generally try to poke people towards safe

I'm sure any sport taken to serious enough level is just as psychological as freediving.

But I do like your thinking - that is also the way I would approach any other sport. There is not much glory in starting a marathon and collapsing mid-way, or putting on 200kg on a bar and trying to lift it, only to fold on your self. Anyone has the ability to take a challenge too big and fail - that's not very exceptional. What earns my respect is constantly taking on challenges and improving, but also taking it on such bites you can actually manage and succeed. Consistency, preparation, self control and a good knowledge of your limits and abilities...That's the key. Of course there are exceptional circumstances sometimes that you just cannot control, and you can fail - but then you just deal with that, analyze your failure and make sure don't make the same mistakes again.