[News] The name is Nitsch. Herbert Nitsch. Or you can call him Mr. 29

Big respect for Herbert, which is the most complete man freediver ever.

But frankly I am not much impressed by records which improve by one meter at those depths. First of all I doubt that you can actually measure to better than 1%, and second there is almost no difference from the point of view of the performance. I would like to see again the old rule that you have to beat a world record by at least 2 meters in depth disciplines.
I think that this reflects a race for sponsors and economics, and I am not too interested.

Though I tend to agree, I also think it's nice that there is some taking and retaking of the record going on. So it's rather polite by Herbert to give the others a change to catch up, LOL

I see that Ryuzo will try again to improve over Herbert's new WR. I celebrate Ryuzo's courage having the feeling he really dives on his limit with the 115m. For Herbert though, I think he should be able to do 120 in FIM, probably a bit more.

About the measurement, yes it's a bit tough, also because the salinity and density of the water varies over the world. So the 2m rule does have some merit in my opinion.

remember that 1 meter in a 124m dive is the equivalent of 0.08" in a 100m sprint, or a whole minute in a marathon, both of which are huge margins.
The Suunto depth gauges are much more accurate than you would expect, and the rope measurements agree with the gauge to within +/- 20cm (almost all the depths recorded are x.3m, but the judges have a habit of putting the marker 30cm below the surface).

Well, if we start with physics I get interested. But please don't take my statements as criticism to the performances, which as I said are just huge and deserve total respect. It's more a matter of principles, and so I am not commenting on a specific competition - sorry if this is misleading in this thread.

It's not accurate to compare 1m in 124m with 0.08" in a 100m race, because the speed of the runners is not uniform - much faster at the end of course. 0.08" might seem like a huge margin next to the finish line, but we wouldn't be able to see that at the beginning of the race. For both marathon and 100m, there are 2 scopes. One is a direct winner, which is usually obvious because it's a parallel competition: guy A beats guy B. In this case 0.08" and 1' are huge margins.
The second scope is that of "record", and then I beg to differ. 100m records are timed to 0.01". At the average speed of the race, this corresponds to 10cm which could easily be the difference in chest size of two runners, or to the advantage at the starting block due to runner's height. Moreover, altitude, air temperature, wind speed, can easily affect the absolute result to more than this accuracy. So for me as a physicist, if a guy runs 100m in 9.67" it doesn't mean necessarily that he was faster than a guy in another time and place at 9.68" because we are not measuring the same distance under the same conditions. But for the media and the sponsors, this difference is worth millions. For marathons, 1' difference in absolute timing can easily be due to the elevation profile of the race, and to other environmental factors.

As for gauges: the fact that 3 watches from the same brand agree to less than 1 meter, only tells me that Suunto has a good quality control policy. It doesn't mean that the 3 watches are measuring the correct depth (of course I can imagine that Suunto has gone to great lengths to include salinity and other factors in their software, at least I hope so because my old D3 does give funny measurements).
But ultimately what counts is the rope, and the rope has to be measured "wet and stretched". I have seen this procedure once, and at least in that case I would not have bet much more than a cheap bottle on the final result. I am sure that for the Suunto Dive Off things are being done in the best possible way, but still when it's a record it means you are comparing with other competitions that you are not able to verify necessarily to the same accuracy. Think currents for example.

I have similar objections to CMAS measuring dynamic results to 1cm... but that's another story.

By the way, congratulations for adding 2m to your own record, which shows the way to go!

William is indeed making nice 2m jumps, thank you!

I like both of you people's arguments.
From the various perspectives of: athlete, jury, media, fan.
I think each group has different needs, appealing to each character and their motivation.
Obviously it's a compromise.

But I think for now the 1m difference is the most accepted interval for media, fans, athletes. Jury wants to generate more certainty tying multiple computers to divers, carefully measuring and remeasuring the rope, hanging it even a 30cm lower than the mark in the rope indicates.
It's a good thing the platform is big, stable and there are very small waves at Dean's blue hole again helping to insure an even better measurement.

In order to have an even more exiting future I think we can use more athletes reaching those top level depths, increasing record frequency and progression and excitement through more competition. For instance I'm really happy that Dave now is again getting closer to the WR in CWT, as well as my favourite Canadian Winram in CNF. Eric Fattah is also starting to get involved after a few years of study and exploration of FRC and other techniques. And off cause Ryuzo who is about to make another leap in the run up to the WC in his homeland Japan.

I think alien are real, he isn't from Earth!