Ploughing vs freediving

[Steinar]

The world ploughing competition is about to start in Sweden and participants from 29 contries are registred. The norm for freediving world championships seems to be around 10 nationalities.
My question is what makes plouging more exiting?

The top freedivers are blessed with media attention, and that should be a huge advantage for the sport. However, freedivers are often portaited as some kind of superhumans.


I think we have to look at ourselves and ask if we realy want the sport to grow, or if we like our image of beeing superhuman dolphin-people to much?

Any other idees how we can beat the ploughers?
Not from you Sebastian. I know you are converting to ploughing soon.

 

[trux]

What about organizing an underwater ploughing competition?

 

[Steinar]

Variabel with plough.
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[CEngelbrecht]

Ploughing has been organized since 6th millenium BC. Freediving only since 1949. We just need time to catch up.

 

[laminar]

I completely agree. We are so full of ourselves. At least that's what it looks like when you look at the image of freediving online and in the media.

Okay, back to my training. I'm doing 1km underwater repeats with no suit in the blizzard. That's the distance I have to cover to dive under one side of any given iceberg and come on the other side.

 

[sross]

The world ploughing competition is about to start in Sweden and participants from 29 contries are registred. The norm for freediving world championships seems to be around 10 nationalities.
My question is what makes plouging more exiting?

I don't think anybody except some real diehards would claim that ploughing is more exciting that freediving.

It's numbers issue. There are more than a billion farmers in this world of ours, I would guess?

How many freedivers are there out there? Do we even have a thousand who participate in competitions, spearing and apnea events, at all levels from local town meets to international level? If you put all freedivers, recreational and competitive together would you have 10,000 people?

This is an interesting question for me. I'd love it if the more informed people could give us some estimates.

Anuhow, I think the freediving community will always be dwarfed by the ploughing community.

 

[Mullins]

At a guess, you'd probably have 10,000 recreational spearos or more in a single Mediterranean country.

While farmers probably outnumber freedivers by a big margin, I'm not sure there would be 1 billion of them (14% of the world's population). I just checked our national statistics and 3.8% of the population is employed in 'Agriculture, forestry and fishing'. We are a pretty agricultural nation without any really big population centres.

 

[trux]

When I only take the data from freediving competitions since 2000, there are over 5000 competitors. However, that's only a tiny fraction of active freedivers.

http://apnea.cz/country_stats.html

First of all, the database is still missing a lot of AIDA competitions, and even many more competitions of non-ADIA freediving federations that are numerous too. I guess the real number is over 10,000 competitors.

Then, from experience I know, that only around 10% of freedivers organized in a club, participate in competitions. And I still speak only about pure freediving, not about spearfishing - the numbers of spearfishers may be easily several folds time higher. And then you have even higher numbers of recreational freedivers and snorkelers. All together, we are certainly speaking about hundreds of thousands of people practising freediving at least occasionally. And more likely about millions.

 

[ReefTroll]

I completely agree. We are so full of ourselves. At least that's what it looks like when you look at the image of freediving online and in the media.

Okay, back to my training. I'm doing 1km underwater repeats with no suit in the blizzard. That's the distance I have to cover to dive under one side of any given iceberg and come on the other side.

Want Trux and I to plough you a path there mate?

 

[Steinar]

My point wasn`t really to discusse the great sport of ploughing, but the fact that freediving is stagnating.
The second WC in Sardinia in 1998 had participants from 28 countries. Those numbers seems impossilble to reach in 2011. Why?

We can blame the media for portraining us as odd neoprene fetishists with a death wish, but they will alway wright the stuff that sells.

When I tell people I`m in to competitiv freediving the most common response is, "wow, I could never do that". Hearing stuff like that makes my ego even bigger

I think we have a responsiblity to tell people that they would be surpised if they gave it a go. You can become a very decent freediver starting at 30 or even 40. You cant say that about that many other sports. Well, maybe ploughing.

 

[x_yeti]

My point wasn`t really to discusse the great sport of ploughing, but the fact that freediving is stagnating.
The second WC in Sardinia in 1998 had participants from 28 countries. Those numbers seems impossilble to reach in 2011. Why?

Because the people running AIDA are unpaid volunteers. Throw some money into the sport and pay people to develop it, then you'll see it grow.

 

[trux]

My point wasn`t really to discusse the great sport of ploughing, but the fact that freediving is stagnating.
The second WC in Sardinia in 1998 had participants from 28 countries. Those numbers seems impossilble to reach in 2011. Why?

I wonder how you came to this conclusion. I do not see the competitive freediving stagnating at all. And because I am processing all the competition data, I think I have a rather good overview. In contrary to what you are telling, I am seeing the exact opposite: competitive freediving is permanently growing, with world championships getting bigger and bigger, which actually starts to pose problems. The Okinawa WC was an exception, but that's well comprehensible because of the distance (for the majority of freedivers), and the cost. Well, the WC in Bahamas had similar problem: it was very expensive (probably them most expensive WC ever), and the distance from Europe, where the majority of competitive freedivers live, was an important limiting factor too.

Have a look at the data in the evolution graphs here, they show the growth pretty clearly:
APNEA.cz ranking

And regarding the 2011 championships: Stavros, the organizer of Depth WC 2011 tells that from the preregistration it looks like the championship may be even bigger than the Indoors WC 2009 in Aarhus, which was the biggest freediving WC ever. And that's only the depth WC - the Indoors WC in Italy has a good chance to surpass Aarhus too. So I am pretty sure that this year, with both WC combined, we will have a record participation again.

 

[Steinar]

I really hope you are right Trux.
The reason I started think about this was the based on Bahamas and Okinawa. There was only 10 contries registered 2 days before the deadline for Kalamata. Hopefully, a bunch of nations registrating in the last minute. Norway included

 

[cdavis]

Without commenting on the stagnation thing, there is another factor which might be significant. When I discovered that there was such a thing as competitive freediving, maybe about 2006, most, if not all, the US records were well within my capacity if I wanted to push a bit. Today they are far beyond what I can imagine doing no matter how hard I work. I suspect something of this is killing off interest from a large number of modestly experienced divers, worldwide. Why try to compete with supermen who are so far beyond you that there seems no chance of a positive result. Developing a wider base of local comps might help counter this.

Connor

 

[Kars]

No problem Connor, we can always have more categories, such as the "masters"

Also I think the world wide economic crises strangle hold is taking a big toll among freedivers who often value experiences over financial comfort, forcing people to make choices, or taking away options.

 

[trux]

I really hope you are right Trux.
The reason I started think about this was the based on Bahamas and Okinawa. There was only 10 contries registered 2 days before the deadline for Kalamata.

That's not really true. I have personally registered two nations already in March, but because not everyone thought to register so soon, Stavros prefered relaunching the registration from the scratch two weeks ago. A few days after, he then listed the 10 nations who managed to answer quickly, but left out all who registered earlier. However, he told me then privately that the preliminary numbers indicate a record participation.

 

[trux]

Why try to compete with supermen who are so far beyond you that there seems no chance of a positive result.

I think about it in exactly the opposite way. In which other sport do you have the chance to compete side by side with such extraterrests as Nitsch, Trubridge, Molchanova, Sessa, Mifsud (regardless what you think about his STA record), Nery, and all those other world champions? In which sport do you have the chance to qualify for the World Championship at 50 or 60 years old? I do not think you will find many. I am a 50 years old geek, completely out of shape, but still competed with all those mentioned, and with many other excellent freedivers in the same competitions. And not only that, it even happened that I've beaten some of them. Just a good luck for me, or a bad day for the others, but it is very satisfactory anyway. It won't happen in most other sports, because you will be separated from the champions by categories, ligues, qualifications, or other hurdless.

 

[Simos]

I can speak only from what I can see in our club but I don't think freediving is stagnating, in fact quite the opposite.

It just needs the right approach and mentality - we primarily dive for enjoyment in our club and hence it's very inclusive. I think it's very important to realise that not everyone is set out to beat the current world record. Most people in fact are super excited to even be able to do a pool length underwater and enjoy it - teaching someone to dive to 5m can make a huge difference to their enjoyment factor in the water.

You might think I am exaggerating but I am not; these are really key factors to consider if we want to make freediving more popular. (I do agree that there is a bit of the 'we're special' element in freediving but we have to choose, unless it becomes popular there won't be any money for the top athletes etc).

I'll give you the example of our club - having a very inclusive approach based on enjoyment, is really attracting so many people, from the ones that could hardly swim to top freedivers. At the moment (and this was not a case a year ago), there are 6 weekly pool sessions in London alone (6 different pools!) with something happening almost every weekend (e.g. courses, diving outings etc) + some weekly sessions in other towns.

I have yet to come across a ploughing club at least here

 

[Yeti]

...cos ploughing totally rocks! and tractors are even cooler! Can't remember the last time i saw a freediver asleep in a hedge after drinkin too much 'old rossie' and not finding their tent......and thats the night before a comp........and then again the following night to commiserate or celebrate! S'pose you could have dingy pulling with a monofin instead of tractor pulling? might work?

Freediving is not really a spectator sport or a spectator fun sport. Crack that nut and things might be different, is my only serious thought on the subject. Plenty of others but definately not serious! .......finger symbols do however make perfect sized fingerfood buffet pancake fryingpans! I like mine with Golden Syrup but you could have fruit I suppose?

 

[Simos]

Yes true that it's not a spectator sport - my wife thinks I'm mad when she catches me watch freediving videos on youtube lol