PRESIDENT:

• Panos Lianos, GRE
• Bill Stromberg, SWE
• Kimmo Lahtinen, FIN

VICE PRESIDENT:

• Hanli Prinsloo, RSA
• Grant W Graves, USA
• Yuzov Vladimir, UKR
• Susan Kluytmans, NED
• Robert King, USA

SECRETARY:

• Pia Jerabek, SUI

SPORT OFFICER:

• Pim Vermeulen, NED
• Susan Kluytmans, NED
• Bill Stromberg, SWE
• Miguèl Vannieuwenhoven, SUI

TECHNICAL OFFICER:

• Grégory Piazzola, FRA
• Pim Vermeulen, NED
• Bill Stromberg, SWE

EDUCATION OFFICER:

• Stavros Kastrinakis, GRE

MEDICAL AND SCIENCE OFFICER:

• Dr. John R. Fitz-Clark, CAN
• Dr. Ralph Potkin, USA
• Dr. Panagiota Balanou, GRE

MEDIA AND PR OFFICER:

• Sebastian Naslund, SWE
• Hanli Prinsloo, RSA

TREASURER:

• Sebastien Nagel, SUI (???)

Now the voting can start! Or maybe not? As I understand from Bill Stromberg it could take several rounds to determine who will be voted for. If you have 5 persons for a job, you first have to eliminate the best of the rest by another vote so that the best two are left in the final vote so that all votes are equally distributed.

For example: if you have 3 candidates for the president function and two of them share more likely the same vision and ideas which are most liked by the Assembly. It could mean that person one receives 10 votes and person 2 as well. The not in favorite candidate could receive 11 votes. And while the both the favorites receive a total of 20 votes for them in total, the not in favorite person will win.

What a monstrous way of voting! I don’t remember that politics are using these kind of voting systems at all. Only if they are from the same party and they have to put in front their main candidate there is a pre-election within the party. This way it could still take some weeks and maybe months before the final new AIDA board is elected. Too much hassle and too little time. Just send out the complete voting list to the assembly and let them vote.

It would be nice if the AIDA interim executive board could publish all the publications from the candidates so that members of AIDA could see what their plans and visions are before electing them only on their name, face and freediving performances…

If you want to read more about AIDA International and what is happening click here.

Bill Stromberg send an email explaining some of the things that have happened in the past to the AIDA Assembly mailinglist on October 12. He has now made this letter public, so I will publish it below for your information.

Dear Assembly,

As the President for AIDA I had the best intentions all the way, and never wanted to appear like some sort dictator. But since the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008 I started to get more and more frustrated about the sleeping positions inside of the executive board and also in the technical commission. During the autumn 2008 everything backfired and I started to take decision above the heads of people. This was very stupid done and done in a stressful situation where my options appeared to be small and to me very limited. At this time I also started to feel a little alienated to some of the key people, who did NOT sleep. This probably because we worked too much and friction began to arise and I did not take care of the problem when it was small and manageable. Anyhow so was my behaviour far from perfect and when the problem from the technical commission was brought in to the board the problems inside of the board started to accelerate and this was partly because the board had a problem to decide how to solve the problem from the TC. This was some kind of a bad circle and a “Catch-22″ situation. To remember is that the AIDA work during the last 3 years have been taken around 2-3 hours every day in average and during some periods a lot more (!). All this when you have a personal company and a work to take care of. Of course there could be a lot of more delegation of work, but with non-active members, some of us took on too much more work than we should, at least I am very sure I did. Maybe it was possible to handle AIDA with only 5 active people 1999 but 10 years later it is impossible, we need a full board that are active and this also in each commission. Now I can see much more activity already on our mailing lists and hopefully also in our forum soon (please!). And I am sure the next executive board will be full of energy to make all the necessary moves to make everything to work, as it should.

When I was re-elected as the President in December 2008 my intention was to stay and work very active until Okinawa WC 2010 and directly after that help to find a new President to take over after me. And then maybe stay one year inside of the board as the TC officer, a post that sometime is closer to my nature than the President is. My goals during this last period as President was to make sure the WC in Okinawa took place and become the best WC ever. Also to create a Medical and Science Commission that would be the world leading in its field with the best possible doctors and researchers. Then help to re-create a very strong TC commission and to have them start with a new safety protocol that will be totally up-dated with the latest when it comes to how safety should be done and how to deal with it. Then of course also have them to up-date the rules as usual, and keep fine-tuning the English etc. A mission for the new TC should be to also come up with a solution for the lanyard problem and maybe have AIDA to start making high quality lanyards and start to sell them for a very good price. This can be done for low money in some parts of the world and should be one of the near future things to do.

Another big thing would be to also start to send money back to the education commission and let them have more options when it comes to the evolution of our education program. After all, the education commission have been the real big money-maker and to channel money back to them would be the most natural thing to do.

When it came to the ranking database and a competition result system we had big plans already, but because of various technical complications and that some of our key persons, for the system we used, have been otherwise engaged, we have a tiring delay for AIDA. This is hopefully on its way to be solved though we got an offer from the Freedive Central people. I have asked them to make a dummy-site so we can check and see if we need to add things or change some setups etc. The final decision about this should be taken by the new board that get selected shortly.

Then I would end to say that I still have the fire and glow to keep these intentions.

Best regards
Bill Strömberg

Diving club S.D.T. Svet Ronjenja is organizing a competition which will be held on 6.12.2009. and is called Serbian Winter Apnea Cup 2009. The competition is also listed in AIDA International calendar of competitions.

Competition Status: Nacional, AIDA Ranking
Discipline: STA, DYN/DNF
Place: SRC „Mladost“ Pancevo, Serbia
Time: 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM

Registration fee is RSD 2000,00 for AIDA Serbia members, and for everyone else is EUR 25.
Judges:

1. Petar Bojović (D Level)
2. Darija Subotin (E Level)
3. Aleksandar Karjuk (D Level)

It is planed that the official part of competition ends at 19.00h, there upon we will pronounce the best competitors, hand them the rewards and then have small party by the pool.

The anouncements are in the following categories:

1. male single
2. female single
3. team
4. the best male and female

All competitors will get lunch and t-shirt with logo of the competition. Beside the medals and cups (trophy) for the best, organization has prepared a suprise rewards. We invite you to join us, make your best results, make new friendships and have fun!

You can contact Janez Kranjc for more information about the competition +381 63 770 66 70, or by email: svetronjenja@yahoo.com.

Visit the website for more information at S.D.T. Svet Ronjenja

AIDA Canada has selected a team of freedivers that will be in-water safety team during the world championships in the Bahamas end of this month. So some attention and respect for these guys is surely needed and therefor the AIDA Canada press release about them below!

The upcoming 6th AIDA Individual World Depth Championships will be held on Long Island, Bahamas from November 25 to December 5, 2009. This is promising to be one of the most exciting depth competitions to date.

The competition features fifty-one athletes that are considered among the best in the world and the freediving community is expecting new world records and many exciting dives. For a competition this challenging the organizers wanted to ensure they could offer the most highly trained and competent safety team possible, so they turned to AIDA Canada.

Doug Sitter (Freedive Toronto) developed an in-depth training and testing program to pick the best candidates from across Canada and train them as an elite safety team. Members were selected after a rigorous trial process that included both classroom and in-water testing. Further testing and grading continued over the AIDA Canada 2009 National Depth Championships in Thetford Mines, Quebec, during which the team provided all of the safety requirements.

Since then the members have continued honing their skills and teamwork in preparation for the World Championships in November.

AIDA Canada is proud to be sending the very best team possible to the World Depth Championships. Comprised of members from across the country, here is our safety team:

Doug Sitter (Toronto)

Lars Graefe (Toronto)

Soren Frederiksen (Toronto)

Philippe Beauchamp (Montreal)

Martin Lebrun (Montreal)

Aaorn Wood and Sergei Timoshenko (Toronto)

Matt Townsend (Vancouver)

Competition starts on November 25, so countdown really has begun. There are still some pretty big names missing from the list like Martin Stepanek and Dave Mullins. It would be a shame if they wouldn’t attend this competition. But there are more names not yet on the list.

Hopefully we see a stream of fresh up to date real-time news on the website. And while the website looks very nice, with animated backgrounds, I just hope it still has the flexibility to update it quick with loads of photo’s, video’s, streams, results and more news. Anybody found a RSS feed yet?

Competitions

7/8 nov – Argentina – Pool
11 nov – New Zealand – Pool
11 nov – Brazil – Pool
14 nov – Germany – Pool
14 nov – Croatia – Pool
22 nov – Greece – Pool
25 nov – 5 dec – Bahamas – Depth (Still not in AIDA Calendar)
28/29 nov – Mexico – Pool
29 nov – Czech Republic – Pool

Record Attempts

None, but we will probably see some new world record during the Bahamas and Croatia competition.

If you have other events to add, please leave them in the comments

Goran Colak

It’s already the last day of the month again, so it’s time for our monthly look back at the freediving scene. What was the most importantfreediving news of the month October 2009?

While there were no official world records set during this month, Goran Colak from Croatia did an unofficial world record in Dynamic with fins with a distance of 254 meters.

Here is the rest of  the list:

0 AIDA World Record
0 Guinness World Record
5 National AIDA Records
4 competition reports
29 posts
10 videos

Click here to view the embedded video.

Linn, Elizabeth and Mary

This one almost slipped through but thanks to a blog post by Elisabeth Kristoffrersen we don’t have to miss a Norwegian freediving competition in our list of posts.

On October 18 it was time for the first ever freediving national championships in Norway. The competition was held in Akim and a total of 12 freedivers attended this competition. 3 women and 9 men, all from Norway.

From left: Bjarte and Steinar (Trond was not present)

Winner with the women was Elisabeth herself with 119,6 points. She did a 4:03 static and a 142 meter dynamic with fins.

Bjarte Nygard was the clear winner with the men with a total of 150,9 points. He managed to do a 6:12 minute static and a 153 meter dynamic with fins.

With only one disqualifications it was a pretty solid competition and after reading some of the reports here, here and here, it’s clear that more competition are on their way in Norway.

You can find all results in the spreadsheet below.

Click here to view the embedded video.