Stephane Mifsud 8'24': SAD NEWS

Speaking about childishness - I just lost some karma for speaking my opinion.

An argument about the fact that some athletes may forget to do an ok sign is that they are too focused on showing a perfect face to the jury to avoid being judged samba for no valid reason....

This could be called "indirect pressure of the jury or of the rules" by opposition to the direct pressure of the jury that was baned by the rules after some freedivers did blackouts or samba after being asked to signal OK or remove their mask just after surfacing in the past.

Another proof that rules should evolve.

It's understandable that athletes are getting paranoid after cases like Mifsud's, Annabel's etc...

I think that in Cypruss, as an athlete, I may get paranoid too when I'll surface after my dive...(well, if I don't black out again of course ehehehe)

And this was not to say that Mifsud didn't signal. Hope ithat point is clear...!

Fred.

Let's not pretend we have the most politically versed representatives

Sebastian,

First I have been responding under the assumption that Sebastian gave the OK and that this was stated by judges at the event. If this is incorrect then I do not disagree with the decision. I would only say it is sad if this is an inappropriate rule that has not been changed.

As can be seen through your posts regarding this incident and all your posts regarding the discussion towards AIDA and LMC, you believe their rules are the best available at this time. I believe AIDA does not understand their own rules very well and that it would be simple to use fairer, safe, and more pleasing rules. So let's just end it at the conclusion that you and I have a different opinion on that issue, until there is a new argument for consideration in it.

Regarding the idea of a new organization, you appear to have a similar rigidity in exploring the concept. You are assuming there is only one structure that can be used in developing a reasonable organization, as can be shown in the following comments:

So if a new organization is started - a new deal. What would that help

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maybe FRED and NAGEL too - and then we still would debate rules, democracy and thelike.
...and soon we would habe athletes accusing each other of making poor performances

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Everybody keeps pointing out that they do not like the idea of "top-dog" in the organization. Yet everybody who argues for AIDA consistently avoids addressing this?!! And instead pretend we are all insane radicals trying to destroy everything. Yes, I have seen lots of countries where the dictator used that concept to convince an army to squash the rebels. So please do not insinuate this on the community when they have good intention for trying to address the effectiveness of a single governing hand. There are better ways of organizing things. Just most people interested in organizing things, do not like the lack of individual "climbing the latter".

It does not come down to "obey the rules" because that is not the issue. People are saying they do not agree with the rules, they do not agree to the state of assessing and making change in the rules, they do not care for how impossible it seems to get common sense changes to occur in the organization.

But through a lot of these discussions, I feel this is mainly the case because those trying (maybe their best) to create a standard organization are modelling it after flawed structures without the prior political experience to know what troubles this might cause and whether it is truly worth it when compared to its affect on the community feeling towards that organization/model. Let's not try to pretend that we have the most politically versed, modest, and creative representives. But that is what you are pretending if you hold rigidly to systems in place that the community has trouble with.

This I believe is the most important point and all that myself and others are trying to get supporters of AIDA to recognize. "Do not pretend to be something you are not". A freediving organization could exist that is devoid of politics, yet maintains a complete professionality approach to the sport.

Sincerely,

Tyler

First of all: I have great respect for stephane and his static performance!
Things are getting mixed up a little bit. It seems evident that rules are essential. And it seems evident that an LMC or not LMC after an 8+ min. static could be worth a discussion. But for me it does not seem evident that an athlete is beeing made responsible for the mishap of an official videocamera beeing pointed at the wrong part of his body...

So it would be a nice thing if Judges at location would EXPLAIN THE APPARENT IMPORTANCE OF POINTING THE VIDEOCAMERA AT THE RIGHT PART OF THE ATHLETE'S BODY TO THE CAMERAMAN. They would do good to point out the importance of the official material beeing appropriate to document the athlete's performance and state for the AIDA BOARD. I know you can tell me this is the organizers job. Still the judges at location are responsible to check the keeping of the AIDA Regulations ...

yours pat

As I mentioned above, that discussion on LMC already took place extensively a few months ago here on DeeperBlue. It did not appear there was much new push or agreeance to move towards change, is my interpretation.

http://forums.deeperblue.net/showthread.php?threadid=39411

http://forums.deeperblue.net/showthread.php?threadid=39905

http://forums.deeperblue.net/showthread.php?threadid=39655

http://forums.deeperblue.net/showthread.php?threadid=39871&highlight=petition

I know I know... as eric pointed out: it is always going to be subjective if we stick to the system. and we don't seem to have an alternative right now. i simply find it ridiculous that because of a simple (i call it) mishap the board assumes the athletes was not clean. i regard it a pervertion of the facts...
yours pat

Baumann's facts

Hi,

I asked Dieter Baumann about the incident. He was actually pretty pissed because he got plenty of mails on this matter today.
According to Dieter the operator of the video camera did not make a mistake. He focused Stephane for 20''. After 21'' he zoomed-in to his face. So according to the video it seems that Stephane did not give an OK-sign within 20'' which makes it an invalid attempt. Dieter hadn't received the tape until last week, thus the long delay. That's what I heard from Dieter.

Fred, you were one of the judges at the attempt. Do you confirm the information stated above as facts?
I guess you've also seen the video.

ANSWER TO DIETER REGARDING THE EMAIL SENT ON MOST OF THE LISTS:

Dieter.

About the facts, I'll be very quick to answer your email.
On the video, you can't say that Stephane Mifsud didn't made the ok sign within the 20 seconds. If you still believe in that, make the video public and everybody will be able to appreciate. FINAL POINT.

JF Julian says the same, so don't insult him. He is a pro about video stuff, you are not.

You say I discredit AIDA.? Well if you say so, you must be right as until not so long ago, you had the final decision on everything.

When we started AIDA 11 years ago, we did it because we were woried about this very young sport could one day be governed by people who just care about their personal interest and projecting their personal frustrations in it like it happens often. Where were you then?

Well, it finaly happened. Your the living proof of that. (one example, you just take the opportunity to sell your videos)

The day you'll have spent that much time, energy, money that I invested in freediving to make it better, you'll maybe have the rigth to think about writing that kind of email.

I sincerly hope that our paths will never cross again.

Fred.

Hi Fred,

so according to you the OK-sign cannot be seen on the tape but might have been shown off-screen, correct?

Didn't you realize the fact that the OK-sign was not seen on the tape when you checked the tape right after Stephane's attempt?

Then you could have told Stephane that the video did not cover all the necessary actions to validate the attempt. I'm sure he might have given it another try instead of throwing out 500 bucks for the doping test.

Why did it take five months until the video finally was delivered to Dieter, or is this also wrong information?

TYLER
"A freediving organization could exist that is devoid of politics, yet maintains a complete professionality approach to the sport."

You wrote the blue paper (with others) to show alternatives to current LMC rules.
Write a Blue paper how the above mentioned organisation should look.

PATFISH
The athlete and his team is in charge of video . They shall supply videofootage of the attempt. Footage that shows EVEYTHING.

According to Dieter - no judge on location actually saw am OK sign. According to Dieter (and the rest of the board) no OK sign could be seen on any of the videomaterial that were sent in (months after).
Fred claims that there is videomaterial that shows an OK sign within 20 seconds. I hope there is a missunderstanding.

Sebastian /Sweden

KARMA

PLEASE - do write your name when you give me bad karma - and do attach an argument - its no fun otherwise.
I want to know who you are so that I can send you some cosmic love so you ease up a bit

- Stephane Mifsud 8'24': ... 20th-March-2004 16:12 POSITIVE
- Stephane Mifsud 8'24': ... 20th-March-2004 16:16 So take some karma back, opinios can only contribute. -DeepThoguht POSITIVE
- Stephane Mifsud 8'24': ... 20th-March-2004 16:12 make it easy for the judges to judge you .. bla bla bla NEGATIVE
- Stephane Mifsud 8'24': ... 20th-March-2004 02:42 NEGATIVE

Seems to be very subjective......

Sebastian
who is getting anoyed with himself for TALKING too much freediving, instead of DOING IT.

Seems to be very subjective......

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Hi ceb,

it's inevitable that the opinions of individuals are subjective - don't you agree?

....but rules for a competitive sport like freediving need not to be - just my opinion

To Maxdream: As a judge on site, I was surprised when the other judge, a few minutes after the performance told me that there was no OK sign.
We watched the video, and on the video, you can't see the ok sign because of the close up shot. So it's logical that the benefit of doubt goes to the athlete as it's not possible to prove by video that he did not made the ok sign. That's all.

To avoid that "frame" problem, AIDA shouldhave it's own video crew so nobody could be blamed for that.

To Cebaztian I didn't claim the sign is visible on the tape, andthat's the point of this story....wake up!!!!!

For info, the other judge, in charge of bringing back the video to AIDA lost it!!!!! So it took a long time to get a copy etc.

Now, I won't write anymore on that case as I gaved all the infos I had and the rest is just pollemics, pollitics. And if it goes further, we will feed lawers.

One more call to AIDA to make the video public to stop the polemic.

Fred.

Originally posted by Frederic Buyle
So it's logical that the benefit of doubt goes to the athlete as it's not possible to prove by video that he did not made the ok sign.

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I don't think the purpose of recording an WR attempt on video is to rule out evidence about what did not happen but to document what did happen. The regulations oblige the athlete to have his complete performance recorded. AFAIK the OK-sign is part of the performance.
Fred, even if it was unclear to you if the OK-sign had to be recorded or not, when you found out that the OK-sign wasn't taped you still could have called Dieter or Sebastian Nagel to make sure that there would be no further query about it when it comes to final validation. I'm sure Dieter or Sebastian would have informed you that it is imparativ to have the OK-sign recorded. Thus Stephane could have made another attempt the next day.

I'd love to see the video myself though I doubt it will go public. What do you think about the idea that the official videos are made available for download on the AIDA site if all persons involved give their ok?

Let's just hope that Martin will beat the 8'24'' on his next attempt to end this mess once and for all.

Originally posted by Frederic Buyle
As a judge on site, I was surprised when the other judge, a few minutes after the performance told me that there was no OK sign.

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Now I am confused. First I understood the OK sign was seen by judges on site, but it was no on the video. Now I read that at least one judge said there was none. Is there actually some judge who has clearly seen an OK sign?

pi

It might not be my job to sum this up - but I have been reading all the mails on all the forums and mailing lists and this is what I have found out.

1) AIDA board (and rules) says it is up to the athlete to deliver a video that shows an OK sign e t c within the 20 seconds.

2) The video delivered to the judge was lost - getting a copy took many months (?), when viewed by the board - there were no OK sign within 20 seconds AND Dieter says there was a FULL picture all the 20 seconds then a zoom in after 21 seconds.

3) FRED claims that the video zooms in earlier and therefore there COULD have been an OK-sign. Benefit of doubt should go to the athlete.

4) And one judge says there were NO ok sign, the other (FRED?) does not remember - he was focused on detecting LMC signs in the face.

But who knows - I were not there and I havent seen the video.

Sebastian/ Sweden

Well, from now on, I guess that in order to not to be disqualified by Aida, the diver should do this:

After surfacing from the apnea:

1. - left hand with thumb up and
2.- right hand with ok signal and
3.- smiling while the recovery breth ups
4.- All of this DURING the whole 20 secs ( and not only the ok signal within the 20 secs)
5.- Also important: the athlete should provide IMAX- quality video so that when the video is reviewed (on an IMAX screen of course) ALL details can be seen.

With all of this, of course, no signs of LMC or samba would be not seen on site or later discovered by Aida.

Karma welcomed!

Saludos

Roberto

Hi all,

I do not want to spend my time speaking how AIDA acts, I know now that as the French Spearfishing Association, AIDA do not want to look to person but seems to put a scarf on their eyes and on their ears too !!!

Anyway, I was training with Stephane a few years ago, I wanted to gave toy his "public" mail in order you to write to him, if you want.

By the way, he brake 10 days ago an old french record in dynamic apnea without fins...

mail@stephanemifsud.com


Bye

Say, what is this "reasonable men test" law?
Just by the sounds of it, I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist in my country...

reasonable man test

“Reasonable Man Test” I assume would be similar to how reasonable care is used in the definition of Negligence in the USA. It goes like this, “Negligence - an individual’s failure to exercise reasonable care, which causes damage or injury to another individual.”

Intent, is a word often used in USA law. When somebody uses the specification of a rule or law to justify doing something that was not the meaning of the rule or law, then the courts rule that it was against the intent of the law.

In this case the AIDA needs to determine if there is sufficient evidence that the OK signal was given, publish their findings, and then override their rule if there is enough evidence that a reasonable person would believe the sign was given.
don