The AIDA Executive Board has reviewed a report from a group of high-level judges, and has taken certain actions relating the “Rulers of the Deep”competition held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt in September 2009, at which Natalia Molchanova was awarded two world records.

Although the Executive Board noted that no questions were raised relating to the athlete’s integrity or her ability to achieve the performances in question, significant conflict of interest issues relating to the presiding judge prevent AIDA from maintaining the validity of those performances (CWT 101m and FIM 90m) as world records. The Executive Board, noting Natalia’s extraordinary achievements in the sport of freediving, expect that she will soon put this matter behind her by meeting or exceeding those performances at a valid world record status event.

Herbert Nitsch (Austria) and William Trubridge (New Zealand) showed that they are in control of the world records in the three depth disciplines, after beating their own and each others records several times in an event in the Bahamas.

Herbert Nitsch made a 120 meters dive in the Free Immersion discipline (pull yourself down and up along a rope). Herbert has moved the record eight meters deeper than his old record from last year. The dive time was: 4′28″. The Austrian veteran coolly pulled down the line into his freefall, then sank to 120 meters, and returned with a tag from the bottom plate, claiming his 31st world record.
He failed in a first attempt where he turned at 102 meters, and then set the record to 114 meters, briefly loosing it to William Trubridge at 116 meters, failed at a 118 meter attempt only to return and do a successful dive to 120 meter.
In the competition in Deans Blue hole, Long island on sunny Bahamas the FIM record was challenged also by Asian champion Ryuzo Shinomiya turning at 105 meters.
William Trubridge set an amazing depth record swimming with out fins to 92 meters depth (330 feet) only to continue five days later with a 95 meters Constant Weight without fins dive, 5 meters deeper than his old world record from 2009. The dive time: 3′45″. An amazing dive without fins – on only one breath.
His dives are executed with precision, taking 7 breast strokes down to the sink phase (where his lungs have compressed and lost their buoyancy). After a free fall down to 95 meters focusing on relaxation and equalization, he returns using 27-28 arm strokes.
William Winram (Canada) made an attempt for the same record but turned at 76 meters.

Herbert Nitsch that recently took the prestigious Constant Weight record (monofin down and up) from Czech Martin Stepanek, added another meter to his own record, putting it to a depth of 124 meters. From the organizers web site:

“Powering off the bottom at 1.4m/s his legs started to fail 35 meters from the surface, and he began his trademark arm stroke-legkick alternations. At 3:57 he surfaced, but on the wrong side of the rope, hitting his head on the underneath of the boom. For most freedivers this would tip them over the edge on a difficult dive, but although Herbert’s neck and chin dipped under, the waterline stopped just below his mouth as he struggled back to the line, saving himself from disqualification (athletes must keep their airways above the water after surfacing). Herbert admitted to still being a little dazed from narcosis or fatigue, even after finishing decompression 10 minutes later. This was the 30th world record for the Austrian, and the deepest self-powered freedive of all time.”

William Trubride 92 CNF
Herbert Nitsch 114 FIM
William Trubride116 FIM
William Trubride 95 CNF
Herbert Nitsch 120 FIM
Herbert Nitsch 124 CWT

Every second year A.I.D.A international organizes the team world championship in freediving. The most prestigious freediving event of the year gathering the worlds best teams. This year Japan will host the event.

This ten day event starting 30th June will be held of the Maede cape in Okinawa in waters with up to 30 meters visibility. The competition consist of performances in three disciplines: depth, distance and time. Each of the three team athletes perform in all three disciplines and the nine results are added in to total points.

Last years winners was France (men) and Russia (women).

Registration is now open for the for the 40 member countries of AIDA international.
http://aida2010.net/english

Attendance fee: 650 dollars + about 50 dollars/ night accommodation

If you can not form a team of three men or three women you may register a mixed team (that will compete in the mens category).

Welcome

AIDA World Championship history

1st – Bay of Villefranche, France 1996
Winner: ITALY

2nd – Sardinia, Italy 1998
Winner: ITALY

3rd – Ibiza, Spain 2001
Winner men: ITALY
Winner women: CANADA

4th – Vancouver, Canada 2004
Winner men: GERMANY
Winner women: CANADA

5th – Hurghada, Egypt 2006
From now on with three disciplines
Winner men: DENMARK
Winner women: RUSSIA

6th – Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt 2008
Winner men: FRANCE
Second Place: Czech Republic
Third Place: Finland

Winner women: RUSSIA
Second Place: USA
Third Place: Japan

The first AIDA Executive Board meetings of the new board has been held.

There will be an Executive Board meeting the first Sunday or Monday every month. In the new ambitions of transparancy and accountability a report will be delivered to the Assembly after each meeting. This first time the AIDA Executive Board will show this report to not only the assembly, but also here, to the wider freediving community.

During the first Executive Board meeting Kimmo L (President) outlined his vision of how the Executive board should work. He spoke about a lot of autonomy for the commissions. The Executive Board is already talking about new working groups (possible commissions) such as science/medical, media/PR and an IT work group.

The Information Technology Work group, (possible future commission), was formed by the president on the day he was elected. Sebastian Nasland, the media/PR officer is the Executive Board representative on the ITC. So far, the ITC has seen a lot of activity from Jonas D, Simo K, Ivo T, Eric v P, also in the group, Paulo N and Peter S.
Mainly Jonas A and Peter S have been working on a new modern web page with many new community functions.
Paulo N and Francois G has donated the Freedivecentral database system. Eric v P has been evaluating the FC code. Simo K and mainly Ivo T has searched for and “cleaned” lost competition results. The IT work group will soon give a suggestion for a new ranking system that at first will focus on loading competition data and in a second stage displays it for the freediving world.

Pia (secretary) supported by Kimmo are working on making AIDA’s financial situation clear. Pia will also be updating contact details of people important for AIDA. Thus, we will soon be looking through the assembly members database.

A working group aimed at producing a fourth draft of the statutes has been formed. Robert King (attorney from USA) is leading this. Also in this group is Grant Graves (vice president), Christian Ernest (Aida Sweden), Petar Bojovic (attorney), Sebastian Naslund with some other people involved in reviewing the work.

Before the Executive Board meeting Dr. John Fitz-Clarke, Science/Medical Officer, proposed to investigate if AIDA can setup an AIDA FREEDIVER medical form that can guide doctors when they do medical exams specific to freediving. Dr. Fitz-Clarke would like organizers to report any situation where freedivers with medical problems have slipped through the screening process.

Dr. John Fitz-Clarke has also noticed that competitions have different standards when it comes to the safety freediver’s routines and would like to do an inventory of these procedures, aiming for some common standard. Gregory Piazzola, the technical officer, has similar concerns and will work with the science/medical commission on this to produce a new “general safety guideline”.

There is also a desire to discuss what is really needed in a competition when it comes to medical competence. Setting the standard too high and we make competitions complicated, too low and we are putting our freedivers at risk. Old procedures will have to be evaluated, since our understanding of blackout, DCS and squeeze has increased recently. We will base our decisions not only on experience, but also on the scientific data available.

Stavros Kastrinakis, Education Officer, and the Education Commission will be involved with these issues as well.  Kastrinakis has suggested to give certain dedicated freediving schools the status of  “AIDA training center”.

In any safety discussion there is also the question of liability and the problem of being a global federation with activities in different countries. Robert King, leading the Statutes work group, will address this.

The Science Commission will be building connections with active apnea researchers. There is a lack of communication between scientists due to a potential “competition situation”, perhaps AIDA can bridge this gap in some cases and build a “community feeling”.

Kimmo Lahtinen, President, has ideas about building bridges between AIDA and DAN. Pim Vermeulen, Sport Officer, has already taken initiatives to building closer connections between AIDA and WADA (the doping agency).

Gregory Piazzola, Technical Officer, has already chosen three members for the Technical Commission (TC): Grant Graves (Judge A Instructor), Pim Vermeulen (Judge A), and Florent Pascal (national judge/lawyer). Several experts will be linked to this commission. One issue that the TC will address is how to help judges, organizers, athletes facing «out of rules» situations and report these situations to others judges. Gregory wants to see debate on how to reduce BO during the individual championships.

The TC, the Sport Officer, and the Media/PR Commission will be working with the organizers of the Team WC 2010 in Okinawa with the aim of making it a big and successful event. The technical officer has had an informal meeting in Japan with one of the organizers.

Two applications for the 2011 individual AIDA world championships have been sent to the board. Bahamas and Greece.

The Media/PR Commission is looking for volunteers with a background in journalism, graphic design, and video/photography. Igor Liberti, Anneli Pompe, Chris Marshall, and Christian Engelbrecht have offered their services. Peter S. and the ITC will be in close co-operation. The Vice President Grant Graves is a consultant for the PR/media working group.

The Sport Officer will as always be working with all competitions, records related subjects, requirements for being in the AIDA Calendar, and result-list checking, etc.

Together with the Responsible for Judges (Grant Graves), the Sport Officer will work on judge education and development. Comments on the rules by the judges will be processed by the Sport Officer and the TC for possible development. The Sport Officer and the Responsible for Judges will be in charge of Jury selection for WR attempts.

The Sport Officer will also be working with many outside contacts like doping, insurance, partnerships etc.

Any competitions should be announced to the Sport Officer through calendar@aida-international.org, results can be send to pim.vermeulen@aida-international.org

In March the AIDA executive board may be able to present each commissions plan for 2010 in front of the assembly.

AIDA EXECUTIVE BOARD