sled diving within AIDA

[Unclejake]

A diver can still choose to descend deeper than he/she is capable of in CWT. The glide phase is lovely.




WRs aren't for sooks, but with an assisted descent :

• Narcosis is more likely
• Any BO would be deeper
• Diver retrieval via Counter Weight is probably slower due to VWT ballast

To those who claim VWT is the safer cousin to NLT...........

I am claiming that. Descending on the assumption that you will be mechanically assisted to the surface holds more risk than VWT.


But..... Is either safe enough to be ratified by AIDA?

 

[efattah]

Will,

Can you post details of the three deep blackouts? Who attempted the latest record, I don't even see it on AIDA's website. Where can we find more information on these three events?

 

[efattah]

Descending on the assumption that you will be mechanically assisted to the surface holds more risk that VWT.

Except that in variable, there is no hope for any decompression stops on the ascent, guaranteeing DCS where the no-limits diver can avoid it.

 

[trux]

The previous deep blackout was at Yasemin's VWT attempt (~125m) last year - she bo'd pretty deep - if I remember well, it was shortly after leaving the base plate (somewhere around 100m). That was a F.R.E.E. record attempt, not AIDA, though.

 

[trux]

So the BO of Yasemin wasn't as deep as I wrote - it happened also at 40m:

Yasemin’s record attempt series ends with a dive to 106m « Yasemin Dalkilic

http://forums.deeperblue.com/genera...ic-cancels-record-attempt-after-blackout.html

 

[mermaidgirl]

Another deep blackout in VWT to add. ( World Record Attempt 130m)
Anna Von B. posted on FB
Anna Von Boetticher
hey guys, unfortunately not quite the dive I had in mind - truly strange, contractions well below 100m leading to a big squeeze and very deep black out. I am ok, thanks to my fantastic scooter safety guardian angel. More details once I have rested. Thank you my fantastic team!

Yesterday at 9:42am ·

Glad she is ok but no more diving for now!!!

 

[Unclejake]

Except that in variable, there is no hope for any decompression stops on the ascent, guaranteeing DCS where the no-limits diver can avoid it.

Good point

EDIT: but I don't know that the overall risk is increased given that the NLTs diver has probably gone deeper, and has gone further than he/she can return from under muscle power. If the NLTs lift fails you are likely to die.

 

[Walrus]

To those that think AIDA needs to put in more effort to make NLT's diving safer:-

Keep in mind that AIDA stopped ratifying NLT’s not long after Loic’s death and did already do a major review of safety standards before allowing it again (at the time Loic was considered to have the safest NLT’s setup in the world). As pointed out by Will the recent incident’s all meet these “newer” safety standards. The AIDA international board is made up of volunteer’s, pretty much everyone works full time and put’s in a lot of effort of their own time unpaid. I don’t know why (and not sure it’s even possible) a lot of effort should be made by board members to satisfy a very small percent of freedivers that want to engage in sled diving. As pointed out these incidents/fatalities will have a negative impact on the majority of the competitors with both people’s perception of the sport, insurance etc.

To those that don’t know or don’t remember a few years back there was no AIDA international board, the entire board disbanded. I along with a lot of other people thought it would be the end of AIDA. It took a lot of effort to get AIDA back up and running again after the huge mess, and more recently finally moving forward. Resources and people’s spare time is stretched to say the least.

Another option if there was a vote on it would be to suspend sled diving up until another safety review could be made. I’m not too sure what changes could be made, Eric had quite a few good suggestions. Even with good vision the Co2 & Nitrogen narcosis will mean a lot of divers will make stupid mistakes at depth. I think it’s quite possible at some stage incidents will happen in CWT as people are getting deeper, I know it scares me a lot more then a hypoxic blackout. Hallucinating at depth when you still have a long way to go before you get back to the surface is not cool. :t

Cheers,
Wal

 

[efattah]

So it was Anna von Boetticher? I'm so happy she's okay. I am also very surprised, I believe her best constant weight dives are in the 50m range and she often complained of losing her mouthfill? I wonder what sort of variable weight depths she managed in training? Anyway her accident sounds pretty scary, yet another reason to avoid the sled events.

 

[mystiach]

I believe your national AIDA disagrees.

No decision has yet been made.

 

[pingshui]

So it was Anna von Boetticher? I'm so happy she's okay. I am also very surprised, I believe her best constant weight dives are in the 50m range and she often complained of losing her mouthfill? I wonder what sort of variable weight depths she managed in training? Anyway her accident sounds pretty scary, yet another reason to avoid the sled events.

Her VWT Record was 90m so far and CWT was 60m, according to the German AIDA page. I really hope she will recover soon!

 

[Kimmo]

Thank you for your valuable ideas and good feedback in this thread. It is always interesting to read this kind of discussions and posts.

Two days ago (11.7.11) Aida International published a report for Aida Assembly (Aida national members) about Santorini accident. There was least couple of topics I would be willing to share also here in Deeperblue:

1. (from the conclusions of the report email) "Accordingly, the AIDA Board recommends that (i) each AIDA National continue to determine for itself whether or not to sanction sled diving in its country, and (ii) AIDA International continue to sanction sled diving, and participate actively in enhancing safety procedures for these disciplines for athletes who continue to pursue them, in order to increase the safety of those divers who participate in the sled disciplines." -- So I recommend freedivers to be active and in close contact to their national Boards regarding the sledge disciplines. Also Aida nationals has their responsibilities in this matter.

2. There was also an interesting study about human factors in sport diving incidents attached in that accident report: Human Factors in Sport Diving Incidents and Accidents Paper -- I might be willing to recommend everybody to read that document and think for a while our own attitude towards freediving, goal setting and risk management in our beautiful sport.

Last but not least. I wrote for Aida Assembly members while ago: Current accidents what we have been witnessing are just a tip of the ice berg of all the freediving related incidents. Aida has been reactive so far with the accidents which has happened during the years; when the accident has happened, and lives has been lost, then there has been an investigation.

My personal opinion is that Aida should be proactive and Aida should collect incident data at Aida website to be summarized. This way we could prevent some serious accidents beforehand and save some lives in the future for sure. This kind of incident reporting is a normal procedure in most of the scuba organizations. Although it just cannot be implemented if we, freedivers, would not be ready to use that system and understand that we would collect that data for ourselves. That kind information might save our own life maybe one day, if it would exist.

Even this may be a little off topic I would be really interested to hear if you, freedivers, would be ready for that kind of arrangement?

Yours Sincerely,

Kimmo Lahtinen
AIDA, president

 

[Will]

On the 14th of June (shortly after Adel's incident) I wrote to the AIDA board to suggest a referendum and moratorium on sled-diving, including:

I understand that with the recent incident and everything that is happening around it that it may seem like the wrong time to discuss AIDA policy, however given that there are several freedivers mentioning their intent to attempt NR/WRs in the sled disciplines I think it is important to consider the issue before any future event is possible.
​

The reply from the board on June 16 mentioned that they would:

"investigate if Aida safety guidelines are up-to-date and fix them if needed"​

I suggested that:

"such an investigation admits the possibility that AIDA safety guidelines for NLT/VWT are NOT up-to-date. Given this possibility, isn't the logical choice to suspend such diving until this has been verified, and if necessary rectified?"​

The near-lethal incident on June 11 could have been avoided with more swift and prudent action. Again, this isn't an "I told you so," but a demonstration of the fact that there IS a problem, and that ALL sled-diving should be suspended until an analysis and referendum have been conducted.

 

[Mullins]

So the AIDA board, on the basis of the investigation into the Santorini accident (conducted by a group of NLT specialists), has taken a position on the continued ratification of sled dives without waiting for a special assembly? I didn't realise the working group was charged wtih making recommendations about the fate of NLT records. I thought they were investigating an accident and making recommendations about safety - a much narrower scope.

The question of whether sled diving belongs in the sport of freediving, at least under the aegis of AIDA, is surely a wider one that should be answered by a special assembly (assuming sufficient AIDA nationals call for one).

 

[Kimmo]

Hello Dave and Will,

Thank you for your quick and good comments.

I recommend to you to get this accident report from your national Board and read it. It contains a lot of valuable information.

"Accordingly, the AIDA Board recommends that" -- comment means that Aida Board can recommend but not to decide this level decisions. In that same email, which I mentioned, it says that Aida Assembly has their responsibility on this matter as Aida Assembly is the highest decision making function in Aida International. This fact is based on Aida Statutes (https://www.aidainternational.org/downloads/3-statutes) which we all have agreed to respect in Aida. Despite our own emotions, opinions and feelings.

Democracy is not the easiest way to govern the organizations. Sometimes it may not be the best way neither, but we have chosen that way in Aida and this is the reason that these decisions will be made with democracy.

Sorry again this kind off topic comment but also my clumsy text. I´m not quite good to express my thoughts in English.

Yours Sincerely,

Kimmo Lahtinen
AIDA, president

 

[pehtran]

After a couple of fatal or very serious crashes in alpine skiinig there have been a big debate about safety measures but no talks about baning the critical disciplines (downhill) or even baning the critical tracks (Kitsbuhel, Wengen) which are notoriously known to be dangerous and not appropriate for modern high speed skiing. This argument is very importaint because there were some people here saying that NL would not be greeted as a new discipline today and that it exists solely because of its history importaince. It is similar in skiing as those tracks would surely not be aproved today.
And of course also skiiers never proposed any kind of other changes but those that concern safety measures.
I belive that removal of sled diving brings no solution. Maybe (and that is a big maybe!) it would clear the name of AIDA so that general public would not associate it with fatal incidents in NL category. But that argument is hypocritical and contraproductive. AIDA should try to prevent those deaths not distance itself from them. Therefore I support the Kimmos view.

 

[Billextreme]

Hi all,

I read this tread with big interest, this even if some of the tread-contributors makes me wonder if they ever done freediving.

Sled diving started without AIDA and will always be done, with or without AIDA. We already today separate our sled diving from competitions. Maybe AIDA could be more detailed in this "separation" explanation, but would it make any big difference?

If you go back and look at AIDA history, all fatal-accidents has happened at private trainings, without AIDA, where safety and preparations could been more than one step better. It almost looks like when the freediver and/or the organizer get "warm in the clothes" and feel that "my system is perfect" or "I have everything under 100% super-duper controll" ...things happen (or more likely can happen). When having this "superman" feeling things started to be ignored or not taken as seriously as they should.

Why is this? We know that this kind of "mentality" is not specific for only freediving, you do find it at many other places in life, both in sports and at work etc. (you find it in spearfishing, and you find in our competitions sports, constant, dynamic and static)

AIDA could/should sets stricter standards when it comes to sled-diving-trainings, but this standards would only work if they will be followed. I am one of the co. author of the AIDA sled diving guidelines, and I have been very close to a lot of sled diving on all levels, inside of AIDA but also outside of AIDA. I was hanging on the line when Audrey did her last dive and I was the judge on Herbers last NL record, 214m, and also on Lüic's 171m WR. I have seen perfect safety in action and I know it can be done. I have, also, seen people doing very deep sled dives, without any safety (or at least close to good safety) ...sometimes they are lucky, sometimes not.

What we need is people follow the safety guidelines. Just because we have deep bo's in constant(yes, we have a numbers of those), we don't want to remove the discipline. What we do is checking if we can make it more safe and find things we can improve.

I am totally ok with National Aida's that remove sled-diving from their agenda, but they have to be ready that there will, or could be, a second National Aida in their country that is doing the sled diving. It is up to each affiliated Aida National (first or second affiliated) to decide about this.

And I am for that AIDA International still recognize records in this two sled disciplines, and at the same time work with guidelines and over-all safety/research when it comes to all kind of deep one-breath-diving.

Question: How many fatal-accidents has happened inside the world of AIDA? (Here I am talking about official AIDA recognized events) And how many fatal-accidents has happened outside of AIDA.

I also read in this post that there are persons trying to make-up statistic and also calculating comparative risk. This by compare "wild" separate training dives with controlled and organized competition results. This "blend" is mighty incorrect and should be highly ignored. The numbers you get from this is only one way of trying to create a situation that does not exist, perhaps in an attempt to prove/propagate an opinion.

have a nice day
/Bill

 

[CEngelbrecht]

Again, this isn't an "I told you so," (...)

Yes, it is. But you have every right.

(...) a demonstration of the fact that there IS a problem, and that ALL sled-diving should be suspended until an analysis and referendum have been conducted.

On this I agree, in view of Anna's incident.

 

[Mullins]

"Accordingly, the AIDA Board recommends that" -- comment means that Aida Board can recommend but not to decide this level decisions.

I appreciate this Kimmo. However I'd expect the board to be quite scrupulous about its neutrality on a topic for which a special assembly has been requested. To adopt a stance - even as a 'recommendation' - is to potentially influence the outcome of what should be a fully democratic process. In my opinion the board's stance should be limited to the purview of the working group's investigation, i.e. safety standards and risk mitigation in sled diving. The question of record ratification is a different one, despite the obvious relationship. It includes other factors, like sporting values, that were not dealt with by the working group.

 

[CEngelbrecht]

I appreciate this Kimmo. However I'd expect the board to be quite scrupulous about its neutrality on a topic for which a special assembly has been requested. To adopt a stance - even as a 'recommendation' - is to potentially influence the outcome of what should be a fully democratic process.

That is quite common in democratic bodies, that a work group decides on a recommendation for the ruling body, in AIDA's case the Assembly. I know that IOC rutinely follows recommendations from their Athletic Commision.

I can imagine that this sled issue was deemed so important, that the AIDA Board became the work group to decide on a recommendation.