Tyler I hope you don’t mind me quoting you, but this issue deserves a new thread, and you summed it up so succinctly.
- One of AIDA’s mission statements is to spread the sport and provide instruction. It fails on both counts.
However Umberto Pelizzari has a dream of creating ‘Apnea Academy International,’ a school for the instruction and research of Freediving – basically the freediving equivalent of PADI. Corso di Apnea has been translated into the English Manual of Freediving and will be published this summer as the course book for ‘Apnea Academy International.’ From there it is a matter of establishing centres and instructors around the world.
- The other main goal of AIDA is to ratify world record attempts. As we have seen, it falls flat on its face.
However FREE has taken over record verifications and with little complaints. The only remaining preference for AIDA is that they have an established history of records and therefore an AIDA record is considered more prestigious...
It doesn’t take much to start an organisation, and if we do it right now then we can still accept such records as Carlos Coste’s 61 UCB and Stefane Misfud’s 8’24”. Think of it – a group of freedivers agrees to approve these records for an interim period while the new organisation is established. Once created the organisation acknowledges existing records from AIDA, FREE and those agreed on from the interim period.
The organisation would then start organising it’s own competitions (with people like Howard) and record attempts, alongside the Apnea Academy, which handles instruction and research of the sport.
As Tyler says, we can start this today. All it takes is for a group of us to agree on a set of records for the different disciplines. The cases for each record could even be discussed in these forums before being voted on. At first the prestige will not be as great as an AIDA record, but in years to come when AIDA is dead and buried (as it surely will be) and the new organisation is universally recognised, then the athlete will look back and be proud of having had a record with XXX.
These forums are a powerful tool. Let’s create the last freediving organisation that we will ever need. What do you think? What should we call it?
Why is there so much interest in AIDA? What do they actually do? What is the reality behind this whole "bring the sport into the limelight"?
These questions make me believe we are all following a crowd, with no understanding of where it is going.
Tomorrow, we, the combined voices of non-political freediving, could decide to begin hosting competitions as a new organization or join with FREE. After all that is the only reason people keep showing up at AIDA's doors. They hold competitions all over the world and recognize the results internationally. WOW big deal.
Hey Eric how about you hold a competition in Vancouver, Sebastian Murat in Australia, Herbert in Austria, etc, etc, and there we go, you think that is not going to get a lot of attention from the media if the word is put out? Just as much as an AIDA competition at least (generally none). The real push to get it seen by the media has always been by individuals and the only connection to AIDA is to have the ability to call it internationally recognized.
Then you have most of the competitors who are doing with no care about the media, it is just an extension of being part of an activity. Have some fun, get recognized for accomplishment, go diving again.
Come on people this is no universal entity ruling the future of freediving and the lives of those involved. If you do not like it then encourage others to start community involvement and different organizations.
If we look at education, AIDA is irrelevant. People are teaching all over the place but some instructors are part of AIDA and promote it because that is where one can compete. The students just want to learn and it seems most reasonable often to learn from those actively competing or part of those competition. If there was a local competition being held, then they are going to be excited to participate, to learn, and encourage others to learn from those involved as well.
To summarize am I missing something or is the following what is important here:
- create an international community that is excited to participate in the activity
- organize local and international competitions
- educate
- have fun
We all have the ability to do this, and it is already happening, except those who are helping to do this keep relying on a decrepid entity. Do we need to?
Think about it.
One other point... If there is so much disappointment with AIDA why are we not attempting to assist Free at hosting local competitions? That appears to be the only thing they are missing?
Tyler
- One of AIDA’s mission statements is to spread the sport and provide instruction. It fails on both counts.
However Umberto Pelizzari has a dream of creating ‘Apnea Academy International,’ a school for the instruction and research of Freediving – basically the freediving equivalent of PADI. Corso di Apnea has been translated into the English Manual of Freediving and will be published this summer as the course book for ‘Apnea Academy International.’ From there it is a matter of establishing centres and instructors around the world.
- The other main goal of AIDA is to ratify world record attempts. As we have seen, it falls flat on its face.
However FREE has taken over record verifications and with little complaints. The only remaining preference for AIDA is that they have an established history of records and therefore an AIDA record is considered more prestigious...
It doesn’t take much to start an organisation, and if we do it right now then we can still accept such records as Carlos Coste’s 61 UCB and Stefane Misfud’s 8’24”. Think of it – a group of freedivers agrees to approve these records for an interim period while the new organisation is established. Once created the organisation acknowledges existing records from AIDA, FREE and those agreed on from the interim period.
The organisation would then start organising it’s own competitions (with people like Howard) and record attempts, alongside the Apnea Academy, which handles instruction and research of the sport.
As Tyler says, we can start this today. All it takes is for a group of us to agree on a set of records for the different disciplines. The cases for each record could even be discussed in these forums before being voted on. At first the prestige will not be as great as an AIDA record, but in years to come when AIDA is dead and buried (as it surely will be) and the new organisation is universally recognised, then the athlete will look back and be proud of having had a record with XXX.
These forums are a powerful tool. Let’s create the last freediving organisation that we will ever need. What do you think? What should we call it?