[Article] Martin Stepanek: It's Not About Me

[sebastien murat]

The problem with AIDA, is that by one way or another they always come across as somehow bigger than the athlete or comp they're ratifying, when in fact they should be like a fly on the wall, i.e., you should see and hear from them (only just), but certainly they should not steal the show or even become topic of conversation in any way. Unfortunately, the picture I keep getting is one prestige associated with being an arbitrator and going here an dthere on 'working holidays'. Consequently, if you run an organization base on personalities rather than pure function, your bound to set yourself up for coming across as political, polemical, and unprofessional (even if its only run by volunteers). This is unfortunate.

Seb
Sweden

[Paul Kotik]

Originally Posted by sebastien murat

The problem with AIDA, is that by one way or another they always come across as somehow bigger than the athlete or comp they're ratifying, when in fact they should be like a fly on the wall, i.e., you should see and hear from them (only just), but certainly they should not steal the show or even become topic of conversation in any way. Unfortunately, the picture I keep getting is one prestige associated with being an arbitrator and going here an dthere on 'working holidays'. Consequently, if you run an organization base on personalities rather than pure function, your bound to set yourself up for coming across as political, polemical, and unprofessional (even if its only run by volunteers). This is unfortunate.

Seb
Sweden

This is a very, very keen insight. What we have here is a classic case of the rule of men, rather than the rule of law. AIDA is providing feudal, rather than liberal-democratic governance.

Brilliant, Seb. Wisest thing anybody's said so far in the matter.

[Jee]

Pastor, is it going to be in 2008? I think they need a lot of practice to do that, may be it will be in 2009?
I've heard about the historical 1000 (mm) No limit dive!
Break the 1000 - now that is THE big challenge for the reckless AJDA divers!

[Gunnar]

I will take smaller steps:

I hearby announce that I will try to beat the no limit record in spring.
I will try to be the first to go to 300!

Location: My local pool.
Time: As soon as it opens in spring.



@Sebastien Murat: Very good point, never thought of it that way...

[Fondueset]

So, AIDA is a bit like windows vista then.
It's on Gunnar - I did 249 today - spotted by a salmon (no lanyard)

[Gunnar]

Originally Posted by Fondueset

I did 249 today - spotted by a salmon (no lanyard)

I doubt that this record can stand. Since you were not wearing a lanyard you need a diver at the bottom plate.
The question is, is a salmon a safty diver.
I say no. It cannot give you signs by hammering against the tank since it does not have a tank.

But still a nice performance, though it is no world record.

[Pastor]

Originally Posted by Jee

Pastor, is it going to be in 2008? I think they need a lot of practice to do that, may be it will be in 2009?
I've heard about the historical 1000 (mm) No limit dive!
Break the 1000 - now that is THE big challenge for the reckless AJDA divers!

No no, 2008 it is, they have had a new training pool installed and will be going for it!

[alix.leclerc]

Originally Posted by Pastor

No no, 2008 it is, they have had a new training pool installed and will be going for it!

wow... you could get to all of 3 feet in that pool!

You know, i'm wondering if they are going to be up to that challenge.

[glennv]

With all this depth measuring problems and unfair tag/lanyard/longer fingernails/linestretch etc advantage, wouldn't it make more sense to say that a new WR has to be at least 5 m deeper then the old one. Who says 1 meter is the holy number.
I never liked this 1 meter crap world records (no offence there of course for the total depth).
Like winning on points in boxing. Always disputes and problems with this. Go for a knockout. Nobody will dispute that.
Same for static . Not 1 second but minimum 10 seconds or so. Dynamic 5 meters sounds fine to me. Then you can also drop the rules about grabbing and touching the bottom , because you will never get 5 meters unfair advantage (if any) from that.

So unless we get nanometer precise electronic measuring equipment like in athletics or swimming with the electronic touch plates, lets make it simpler.

[efattah]

I like Glenn's idea about breaking the record by many meters.

Using 4m for CW, then the record list would be:
Pelizzari 80m (beat 75m) +5m
Herbert 86m (beat 82m) +4m
Coste 102m (beat 95m) +7m

Big static records:
Martin 8'06" (beat 7'35") +31 s
Sietas 8'47" (beat 8'15") +32 s
Sietas 9'04" (beat 8'47") +17 s

[Paul Kotik]

Originally Posted by efattah

I like Glenn's idea about breaking the record by many meters.

Using 4m for CW, then the record list would be:
Pelizzari 80m (beat 75m) +5m
Herbert 86m (beat 82m) +4m
Coste 102m (beat 95m) +7m

Big static records:
Martin 8'06" (beat 7'35") +31 s
Sietas 8'47" (beat 8'15") +32 s
Sietas 9'04" (beat 8'47") +17 s

Me, too. Our intsrumentation's resolution is to coarse for the current minimum increments. In 2001 Eric Fattah promised me and my daughter to to take us to the best restaurant in Vancouver!

[Billextreme]

ojjj... 5 meters?

If we only can be a little bit sharper with the line measuring, and then the NEW software that SUUNTO just have installed in our totally updated computers will work as it should, then we could maybe soon go over to feet instead. Or at least half meters. ...but maybe I'm running a little bit fast when it comes to that. And then we have Leica and with their laser measuring tools we could go down to absolute decimeters instead of meters in Dynamic. Centimeters would be possible, but unfortunately, not even Olympic pools have exactly the same length on each lane.

/ B

[efattah]

In my mind, it doesn't matter if we can *measure* the depth accurately. What matters is the spirit of the dive. Different oceans have different salinity and temperature, which means different drag. Also different conditions on each day. If Herbert dove 111m, then Martin dives 112m, can you really say Martin is the better diver? No. At best you can say they are virtually the same in skill level. But if Martin dives 115m or 116m, then Martin is clearly better.

Herbert made a good point of it in 2001, during his 134m no-fins dynamic record. As he passed the record of 125m, he swam many more meters, as he said, 'to make it clear' that the record was broken.

I had the same idea in 2001, though things didn't work out as hoped. After diving 82m (+1m over the record), we set things up for 90m the next day, but everything went wrong (broken camera, line hit the wall, red tide, late boat, lost the line in zero vis, etc...)

Anyway, with 'only' 82m, it was not all clear that this was any better than Brett LeMaster's dive... especially since his dive was with bifins !! Because I still felt that I hadn't really broken the record, a month later we had a competition, so I announced 85m. The day of the competition the organizer told us that the depth limit had been 'reduced' to 65m because the deep safety diver couldn't come (and no lanyards in those days)... thus was the end of my deep diving days ! Then Herbert dove 86m a few weeks later, and thus became the first diver to *clearly* break LeMaster's record.

[Billextreme]

The distance is the key here.

111 meter is more than 110 meter, than if someone feel they need to break a record with 4-5 meters it's up to the athlete.

Natalia Molchanova is maybe the best example here.
STA: 45s 2005, 14s 2006 and 30 seconds in Maribor 2007.
DYN: 14m first time, then 6m, then 22m and last 5 meter.
DNF: 4m first time, then 16m, then 7m and last 18 meter.
CWT: 8 meters directly on her first attempt.
CNF: 5 meter in very simple dive(!)
FIM: 4m first time, 2m second time.

A true champion I must say

/B

[glennv]

That is exactly what i mean. Even if we can measure nanometers. Its the overall feeling that one records is clearly better then the other. The wow factor. Natalia knows how to do it. No one will doubt her records because she makes big leaps. I am sure that the respect you get for breaking a record by a big leap is also much bigger. I will most likely never break a world record but I am sure i would train my ass off to beat a record by a large margin to make sure there is no doubt if maybe different circumstances like temperature , waves, line stretch, salinity, whatever gave me just that bit of slight advantage to put me one meter deeper. Wouldn't feel good to me. I have done it with national records and it felt great. I purposely trained longer to make sure it did not just took a couple of seconds on the static record, but did more then 30 seconds each time i broke it. (as did the guy who just recently broke mine again)

Also a bigger gap rule would take the point away for some people doing the Sergei Bubka thing . Every time one meter more (when you can do 15 ) to milk the media and sponsors, which in itself is very smart and shows complete control but to me makes me completely loose interest in the performance.