a Perfect World?
One of the best things about life is that there are many ways to achieve something.
What I think would be 'great' is if freediving competitions inspired further friendships, exploration and discoveries about human potential (not necessarily in that order
).
As long as freedivers who take part in competitions out of a love of the sport leave with a sour taste in their mouth, freediving competitions are not following the spirit of apnea.
This is why I have entered the debate; and why many other people I know are involved in it.
In a perfect world, there would be no judges in freediving. The 'official' watching you at the surface, or better yet, in the water, should be concerned, first and foremost with your safety, not with how you look--clear, bug-eyed, trembling, or otherwise. In addition, following the recent swirl around Carlos Coste's rejected WR in CWWF, this 'official' should be able to ratify a performance on the spot, as the overseer of all aspects of the athletic performance.
It seems to me that a great many experienced athletes want something better from AIDA. Media and sponsors, which make many of the competitions happen also would like change. So far it seems we have the following options:
1. Let athletes vote with their entrance fees, chosing non-AIDA sanctioned events (FREE or independent competitions)
2. Ask AIDA representatives for change through the democratic, albeit limited channels outlined by Chris in his post
3. Form a new freediving organization :duh
4. Boycott competitions until the rules change
5. Invite an independent body like Guinness to ratify 'world records'
6. Hold a indie competition where the athletes, media, sponsors all have input on deciding the rules
7. Organize as freedivers to bring about change more quickly (within AIDA or without--see #6)
Personally, I think that trying to make change within AIDA is the best short term option. The athletes are all there, from many different countries, national chapters are emerging with more and more members, the infrastructure is in place--so it does make sense to try to make changes within AIDA if possible. (I really like FREE's approach--but unfortunately they are not positioned right now to give all the active AIDA freedivers a new look on competitive freediving--hopefully they will have competitions in the future to show that alternatives are a good thing.)
What I was trying to emphasize on my last post was that posting on Chat_AIDA, freediver.co.uk, or deeperblue is not enough. If AIDA lacks transparency and athletes find it difficult to get their collective voices heard within AIDA forums for discussion, then it is up to the athletes and other interested participants
themselves to organize and bring a coordinated and thoughtful pressure on the debate over rule changes and perhaps more importantly, changes to AIDA's structure and functioning.
So again, I suggest that if freedivers from a variety of forums, web sites and egroups, from expert competitor to newbie, from Denmark to South Africa to Venezuela to Italy lent their voices to a well-thought out petition or letter of concern (or you could call it a "blue paper"
) about their recommendations for 'measuring freediving performances' or some such thing, I think AIDA, FREE and the freediving community would sit up and take notice.
If you don't think it would work, then I challenge you to sign on and see what happens...
I do believe that EVENTUALLY competitive freediving will change, but why waste years of aggravation on slow change, when things could be changed quickly, leaving time for lots of good times in the Blue/Green.
Any takers?
Pete
Vancouver, BC
