Sport of Freediving

[CEngelbrecht]

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In your opinion, with 10.000 people training with "some rope and a weight" and a buddy at 40-100 meters how many incidents would we have each year? I love freediving, but I wouldn't let my children do that. Would you blame me?
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Well, the buddy doesn't go to more than 15-20m before he/she follows the deep diver up the rest of the way when he/she returns. That's how people train in reality, also cause if a blackout occurs, it occurs shortly before the surface.
This approach to training does sound very risky, I agree, but is it different from when people go spearfishing? Any deep diver I know of (except for Pipin, apparently) doesn't start a deep diving session without having been to at least the targeted depth or a few meters less before. People know their boundaries beforehand and if someone comes with an arrogant attitude about his own limits we give him hell! We learn every newcomer the keyword 'moderation', and we learn them that in the pool before they are taken into open water. For what I know this is the basic principle of all cells of freedivers (except for Pipin and a few others that consequently see people's disrespect), and that's how freediving survives for now, until some retrival system for deep training is being made available for purchase (people are talking a lot about that these days).


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Sorry Chris, I had a close look at AIDA comps results in the last years and what I see is a few *athletes* and many *tourists*. If this is what you call "developement" of Freediving, we just have different opinions.
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Yes, that's what I call development, cause some of those 'tourists' turn into champions, like f.i. Herbert Nitsch, who did like 35 meters in his first competition and two seasons later did 86 on Ibiza. The bulk of any sport are the 'tourists' which lead the way for the champions. One doesn't exist without the other, and they make each other stronger. It ain't every runner in the world that can do 100m in 10-11 seconds.


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I'm really sorry to read that. This discipline doesn't waste anyone's time because no one is forced to practice it. Disrespect for freedivers who love freediving exactly as me and you but have different approach to this sport (from you) and want to try the Cube is unacceptable, rude and completely inconcievable to me.
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I still stand by what I said, it's an idea that completely misses the mark. Because CMAS has the possibilities she has, it's a sporting sin missing the mark like this.


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No, it's not impressive. Not at all. It's - forgive me - totally discouraging.
We have 800 spearfishers in our national competitions.....
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Spearfishing has more years on its back to gain momentum, freediving has had about ten years, starting from scratch.
Mark my words: Freediving as AIDA & FREE works with it are gonna continue to grow and they are gonna surpass the numbers of spearfishers and hockey and rugby players in the end. The foundation is broader, the interest is broader, the sporting aspect (Vitius, Altius, Fortius) is broader. Mark my words, freediving has the exact same number potential as the skiing sports. Welcome to the world.

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we need to unite efforts one of these days, CMAS, AIDA, IAFD, FREE and all.
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I agree, but showing disrespect for who has different ideas on the best way to promote freediving it's not a good beginning, in my opinion.
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I was a bit out of line there, I agree, sorry. If the people of CMAS are ignorant, they don't know any better. All you can do in the meantime is agitate. Like I do now

Chris Engelbrecht, Copenhagen

 

[joefox]

Mark my words: Freediving as AIDA & FREE works with it are gonna continue to grow and they are gonna surpass the numbers of spearfishers and hockey and rugby players in the end. The foundation is broader, the interest is broader, the sporting aspect (Vitius, Altius, Fortius) is broader. Mark my words, freediving has the exact same number potential as the skiing sports. Welcome to the world.

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Considering the growth rate (450 people after 11 years), it will take a while to match skiing.




Joefox

PS Well done Pierre Frolla!! Open mind!

 

[subaquaticus]

Are you serious when you say that CMAS is making a good start in freediving comps ?
They are organising the most stupid and dangerous event you can think of !
Reminder : the CMAS comp in sept 2003 will consist of a cube : go down at 15m, and then do a dynamic apnea along a 15m x 15m square. Happy blackouts ! Fabrice

As far as I understood FFESSM (French CMAS abandoned the idea of doing the "cube" in its comps for 2005 ? It seems to give you right...

 

[joefox]

FEESSM just got a big kick in the ass at the CMAS board election.

They lost everything: president (Pierre Mercier, goodbye), secretary (Alain Foret, another goodbye) etc...

What would you expect from them, cooperation? They will be out of the game as it happened in spearfishing, and that's it.

In the meantime, AIDA is dying. No more Howard Jones, no more Sebastien Nagel, no more Cyprus, no more interest for records and all that stuff.

In Italy, we have about 15 competitions wich select the atheles who can access the italian championship. So far, after 6 competitions, we have....

Pos. Club Athlete Meters

1 Atlantis Sub Leuci Homar 178,12
2 Atlantis Sub Garaldi Matteo 177,40
3 Rane Nere Sub Trento Tomasi Michele 176,96
4 Rane Nere Sub Trento Righetto Flavio 150,50
5 Rane Nere Sub Trento Crovato Massimiliano 150,00
6 Apnea Academy Competition Tovaglieri Stefano 150,00
7 Polisportiva Ciambra Montanti Gianfranco 150,00
8 Polisportiva Ciambra Siliprandi Paolo 149,50
9 Komaros Sub Ancona De Mola Giacomo 148,05
10 Apnea Academy Competition Zappettini Massimiliano 143,40
11 Polisportiva Ciambra Catalano Nicola 142,60
12 Atasub Levico Zangoni Matteo 141,36
13 Polisportiva Ciambra Busetta Giovanni 140,72
14 Atasub Levico Marchi Giuliano 139,75
15 Komaros Sub Ancona Ominetti Mirco 138,16
16 Orsa M. Perugina Giandominici Jacopo 137,40
17 Ci.Ca.Sub Garibaldi Livorno La Rosa Giuseppe 136,50
18 Atlantis Sub Talò Alessandro 136,22
19 Atasub Levico Chiusole Giancarlo 135,82
20 Ci.Ca.Sub Garibaldi Livorno Pertusati Marco 135,50
21 Sub Tridente Pesaro Zagaglia Andrea 135,15
22 Barracuda Sub Pistoia Gonfiantini Alessandro 133,65
23 Club Sommozzatori Padova Caffini Michele 132,63
24 Pinna Sub Siragusa Luciano 129,37
25 Apnea Academy Competition Tucci Andrea 127,10
26 Atasub Levico Cannistraci Carlo 126,04
27 Sub Tridente Pesaro Putignano Nicola 124,60
28 Komaros Sub Ancona Baj Marco 111,14
29 Centro Subacqueo Nord Italia Stella Alessandro 107,88
30 Roma U.H.R.C. Spatocco Gianluca 107,30
31 Rane Nere Sub Trento Faes Alessandro 102,50
32 Monsub Jesi Brecciaroli Carlo 100,47
33 Apnea Academy Competition Gallo Marco 100,00
34 Agonismo Sub Torino Romano Domenico 100,00
35 Nel Blu Trieste Stoppar Lorenzo 100,00
36 CS Trieste Renzi Alberto 100,00
37 CS Trieste Savron Giacomo 100,00
38 Blu Deep Roma Marcucci Luca 100,00

This is CMAS freediving.

Good bye

Joefox

 

[Stephan Whelan]

Is competition the only thing FreeDiving is about? I agree that it is a element of the sport that traditionally has gotten the public interested but i'm not so sure that competition is really the way to go.

Paul Kotik makes an excellent point in his latest editorial and compares FreeDiving to the early days of Wind-Surfing. Now there are very few new wind-surfers and growth in the sport has all but stopped.

Is that the way we want the FreeDiving world to go?

Or are the current efforts by several members inside AIDA to get an established education scheme up-and-running more beneficial in the long term? Competitions encourage people to learn about the sport but how do you actually train them without a solid education scheme to back them up?

 

[joefox]

Stephan,

please define "excellent point", I don't see any point.

TRAINERS, in sport we need TRAINERS, we really don't need any (show)business-oriented-education.

Anyway, time will tell! Let's see what happens in the next 5 years.

Regards,

Joefox

 

[Stephan Whelan]

Joefox,

Here is a specific quote lifted from page one of the article:

Since we want our wonderful sport to grow and flourish, we must pay attention to the intake valve, the recruiting tent, the marketing department or whatever it is we should call the process of stimulating interest in, and easing the way of newcomers to our world.

I agree that we need trainers but you also need commerical orientated courses as well. You need a way of putting money back into the sport to help it grow and develop new materials to help educate people.

A good education program will allow both individual trainers as well as commerical operations.

 

[joefox]

Stephan,
you don't seem to know what Sport Clubs are.

Just in Italy, the Underwater Activities division of FIPSAS has something like 300 affiliated sport clubs (with at least 15 people), most of which organize courses (then we have Apnea Academy, Apnea National School, PSS etc...).

It's always the same story: in freediving everyone think that just because it's a particular sport then we have to re-invent everything. That's not true: look at swimming or finswimming and you'll get all the answers.

Joefox

 

[Stephan Whelan]

Joefox,

you don't seem to know what Sport Clubs are.

I understand what a sports club is. I was involved with the British Sub Aqua Club (at various levels) for many years and when I was younger I used to swim competitively.

My original post was asking a question - do you believe competition is the only reason for freediving? You seem to be pushing that element quite hard (and you wouldn't be the only one)

My belief is that education is a very strong and important element of any sport. There has to be scope in the education system for small entities (clubs that have trainers - as you put it) to larger commercial entities (Apnea Academy, Performance FreeDiving, etc...)

Only if you look after bringing in a new stream of people interested in the sport will you continue to grow the sport.

Competition forms a good and exciting way of promoting the sport but should not be the only reason for the sport to exist.

Clubs also form a good way of keeping people interested in the sport but they need to have a formalised education system to ensure that education is done properly and (for FreeDiving in particular) safely.

It's always the same story: in freediving everyone think that just because it's a particular sport then we have to re-invent everything. That's not true: look at swimming or finswimming and you'll get all the answers.

Are you saying the system is perfect? Are you saying that swimming does not have a formalised education programme? Shouldn't an organisation and it's members always been looking at improving the system?