Apart from informing and training its members and the general public about the sport of freediving, Aida Hellas holds two competitions each year that aim at promoting the sport, bringing new athletes to the competitions and finally, choosing the Greek National Team. The competition held in the summer time consists of two days exclusively at sea, while the spring games takes place during one day and has only disciplines in the pool. This is the case concerning the games held on the 18th of April at the swimming pool of Chalandri. Freediving School was responsible for the organization of the games while thanks to the rules and regulations that applied according to Aida International standards and the Aida ranking status, the games were open to athletes from any country. Unfortunately the only athlete that traveled to Greece to take place was Philip Liv from London.
Since pictures and videos usually speak for themselves we won’t get into details concerning the performances, repeating the same things you will see in the performance tables also available is probably useless. However we will mention some of the things we liked and some we unfortunately didn’t.
POSITIVE
• The perfect organization and the positive attitude of all those who were involved
• The presence of new athletes, men and women, that give great promises and hopes for the future of the sport
• The absence of blackouts (except for two athletes), something proving that those who take place are constantly getting more experienced, knowing when to push their limits and when to stop
• The performances. In the static apnea of the men, the first three places were all very close to 7 minutes, while the other disciplines also proved that the level of the Greek athletes is pretty high
• The presence of Philip Liv, who travelled all the way from London just to participate
• The tasteful and rich buffet that followed after the end…
NEGATIVE
• The almost complete absence of a crowd, something that minimized the efforts taking place by the organization and the athletes
• We would have liked a National (and why not, even a World) Record
