Spectator sport
Including the athletes themselves some 300 people were watching the finals in the World Championships in Aarhus Denmark, the biggest gathering of freedivers ever. There was sport commentating, under water cameras and some very spectacular dives with athletes coming up on the edge of BO fighting with heavy LMC trying and in many cases succeeding to do the SP. The audience standing in their seats where gasping apparently taken in by the drama. The last WC saw numerous blackouts. Watched with great curiosity by freedivers and non-freedivers alike. There were those in the audience that found blackouts a scary thing, but still they were fascinated.

So the big question is…
Do we want athletes pushing it to the limit, fighting with the SP at the end? Adding that kind of drama that can be found in other sports: will he make it or not!? Look at the way he is fighting to regain control.
Audience and media are one unit, they are linked. Will the audience like the PBOMM fighting? It is easy to say that a clear majority does. So does media. They want drama. A few will turn their faces and shy away from this gladiator spectacle, but most will stay and watch with awe.
If Aida chooses this way, freediving will still be portrayed as one of the most dangerous sports in the world. Which will feel odd for the athletes, since they all know it is one of the safest sports in the world. And still, while media might want the Gladiator angle, does the freedivers themselves want this?

The most dangerous sport in the world
If looking at competitive freediving and its athletes it is not a dangerous game if done by the safety standards that has evolved during the years.
CMAS left the world record validating scene because they said it was becoming dangerous. Maybe it was. Aida was created and took over, evolved and spread. While the CMAS watched and did nothing, the Aida community learned and developed safety standards.

For the CMAS and its members pushing yourself in freediving has been a taboo. Thus no detailed understanding of the sport has evolved in this organization. As Aida divers pushed on by trial and error they started to understand the mechanisms of breath hold and blackouts, they adjusted training methods and safety set ups accordingly.

Is a blackout dangerous?
If you are alone or among people that do not understand freediving, a blackout in water might be your death. If instead among trained dive buddies it is more like a short fainting that most likely leaves no permanent damage.
But is that true? Well it’s neither true nor false. We see freedivers again and again blacking out under water, taken to the surface with no water in their lungs, regaining consciousness mostly within 10-30 seconds, and at the most feel a slight headache (if no squeeze or ear barotrauma has been suffered). Will a BO leave some kind of scar, will repeated BO/s lead to some permanent damage? Will all hard training freedivers have Parkinson’s disease at the end of their lives? We just don’t know. But there are no real indications that they will have.

A study in Sweden is sometimes used as proof that freediving is dangerous. Several freedivers held their breath until low values of O2 saturation. One held his breath for 7 minutes until only seconds away from BO. The scientist measures markers for brain damage. And yes they found signs of brain damage (if long term or short term they cannot say). But what they can say is that the level of brain damage is as much as when a football player heads a ball that the goalkeeper kicked out. And this happens again and again every day watched by millions of people cheering at them.
No the smoking gun that proves long term damage of freediving has yet to be found.

The ones that talks about safety issues when it comes to an athlete dipping airways for a second after a performance are getting fewer and fewer – statistics speaks for itself.

Moral panic
It is somehow that freediving is judged differently just because it is done under water, in a (for the journalist) hostile environment.
Journalist likes to spook the audience, or feel responsible by warning the audience. “Look someone fainted in a pool lets ban breath holding”. And many doctors play along taking the stance of a responsible general practitioner and suggesting a ban on everything that looks remotely dangerous. They oversee the whole picture and lack the attitude of a dedicated sports doctor with apnea knowledge. Top level freedivers are not small children that are unaware of risks. Adventure sports are about taking risks.

Whatever the freedivers do, competitions in freediving will most likely always be PERCEIVED as dangerous by the few interested in audience and media. Mainly because media now and then writes the same article over and over. They WANT it to be dangerous, it’s a better story.

And as many has said: sponsors are not deterred by a sport perceived as hard core. It
just attracts OTHER kind of sponsors. Or in our case hardly any.

Conclusion. We can go with the perceived image of our sport and work from there. Or we can continue to try and educate media/audience about the fact that it LOOKS bad but most likely isn’t (that’s an uphill struggle trying to win that fight). Right now we are sort of taking both roads.

Should we get rid of PBOMM and move towards survival rules?
By using the rules of competitive freediving Aida can set the standard of what is an approved dive. Because these dives will be seen on TV and on YouTube. Young divers will follow the example of the winners. We already see at courses and at recreational level freediving that divers can call a dive with an LMC a personal best.

Seeing the difference between LMC and PBOMM isn’t that hard if you are a good judge. You just have to see many, even feel the difference yourself. An additional problem is the fact that some judges are reluctant to show red cards, especially in world championships and especially not to famous athletes.

We could remove PBOMM and the following will happen:
- More BO, more LMC.
- Easier judging, more fair treatment of athletes.
- The sport will be perceived as even more dangerous.
- Competitions would not really get any more dangerous.
(but training among beginners most likely will).

But let’s face it: an LMC and PBOMM surfacing doesn’t not look like control. Freediving
could be a gentleman's sport, and about body awareness, and knowing your limits. Done in style. But it is moving towards a more gladiator kind of sport (which actually I believe
will adhere to media, audience and sponsors (the three are linked)).

What we do with the SP/PBPMM rule will decide which road we take.

Sebastian Naslund
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