Is It Soup Yet ?
Posted By Paul Kotik on 24 April 2006
This has several of the elements that make for compelling spectator sport. The athletes have a direct financial motive for each action, and must also play strategy and tactics. Greed comes into conflict with survival -- will he drop the box and thus make it to the surface, or hold on to it and black out 20 meters underwater ? How many boxes should a diver try to retrieve on each dive ? Should he go for the deeper ones first ? Surface recovery time becomes a tactical issue -- every minute one diver takes for himself on the surface is another minute for his rival to recover, too. If you are confident you will win, then you want your opponent to bring up as much gold as possible, since you will get to keep it
Freediving does not really allow for the kinds of minor and intermediate injuries that make, say, pro football so entertaining. No sprains, no broken ankles, nothing like that. Blackouts are the thing in freediving, and having blacked out, one either drowns or one does not. Since we don't want anyone to actually die, and since we know very well how to manage blackouts, we should learn to stage events so that a blacked-out diver becomes the subject of a very flamboyant , dramatic and humiliating rescue.
The crowd will love it !
Back to reality. You get the idea, so now, let's see what we can do. I sound the call: get your imaginations working. Dream up some new freediving disciplines, some new and interesting ways to televise our sport, and e-mail them to me.
Once we figure out how to get millions of eyeballs watching our competitions, we'll start drawing in the sponsor money in a big way. Prize money will pile up in event purses like barnacles on the dock pilings, and top divers will start making those down payments on Cayman villas.
And yes, it will have turned our spiritual, ascetic, and frankly monastic way of life into a crass commercial circus. Is this bad ? Well, those of us who want to continue our freediving lives in splendid isolation, sleeping on couches and draped in debt are perfectly free to carry on as before. Others, who want to get their childrens' teeth straightened , will have a choice.
And, in general, choice is a good thing.
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