AIDA — International Association for the Development of Apnea

Voters: Austria, Australia, Poland, Philippines, Russian Federation, Japan, France, United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Republic of Korea, Israel, Mexico, United States

   Dear Assembly,
   
   We are proud to present the totally rewritten, updated, merged “Rules & Regulations for competitions and record attempts”. First I like to explain the reasoning and time line behind this big process after which I like to thank some people in particular.
   
   Before my election I started going through the voted down version of the rules update and the previous version. In that time I decided to start from scratch in an empty document with the goal to merge again all into one file again to reduce the possibilities for errors, contradictions and misjudgments. This first step finished in the beginning of January and then we, as TC, started working on the badly needed changes and adaptations for the new rules. The process that we have chosen to follow is listed below;
   
   • November 2017, start evaluating old versions
   • December 2017, rules and regulations merged with technical documentation, safety procedures and a total rewritten video chapter
   • January 2018, start discussions with TC, Medic committee and safety committee concerning safety and doping updates
   • April 2018, preliminary version ready
   • May 2018, first batch of proof reads, adaptations and corrections
   • July 2018, second batch of proof reads and corrections
   • September 2018, due to developments in sport new round of discussions and adaptations
   • October 2018, third batch of proof reads and finalizing for first major update
   • November 2018, single line vote in Assembly
   • November 2018, handing over all documents to a designer and language expert for final round of corrections and formatting
   • December 2018, presentation of the updated document to Assembly and AIDA World
   • January 2019, implementation of the new rules and related documents (last is to be presented ASAP)
   
   What has changed besides the single line votes?
   • The base structure, I introduced in 2008, is still used but is now much more strictly implemented reducing double / triple / etc. rules where possible
   • The chapters and sections are structured more in the time line of the events to make it easier to read and understand
   • Section / paragraph headers added for quicker search option in a printed version
   • The English is simplified and corrected as much as possible to make it easier for translations and reduce interpretation errors.
   • Repeating rules are moved as much as possible to the general chapter to reduce file size and reduce the risk of contradicting rule texts
   • Some graphics are added for this version, more will follow or presented as appendix
   • The document is setup in the correct style following AIDA design book, we decided to go for a printing optimized version.
   • The related files (doping, medical, protest, records) are updated and put in the correct style
   • From AIDA Medical committee we have the new ‘management of doping violations’ and corrected texts and placed it in the correct style
   • From AIDA Medical committee we have the ‘medical assessment form’ and corrected texts and placed in the correct style
   • In all, we managed to reduce the file size from almost 90 pages (from 3 documents) to 54 and that is including adding new sections and paragraphs.
   
   
   A word of thanks;
   
   First of all, I thank you all in the Assembly for to giving me the responsibility and support in this important job to move ahead in stead of a standstill or even worse moving backwards. We, as Technical Committee, of course can not do this work without your support.
   
   Secondly, I like to thank the AIDA Medical Committee and the Safety Committee for collaborating with us on several important issues that happened in the past years and to try to avoid similar things from happening again without over reacting or making hasted adaptations to the rules and regulations without giving all a thorough thought and scientific base. In addition, I like to thank two members of the Medical team; dr. Oleg Melikhov and dr. Irina Zelenkova, with whom we had long good conversations / discussions about sensitive subjects related to the health of our athletes and doping related items. Their work is implemented in the rules or attached as separate document(s).
   
   Thirdly, I like to thank my team (Grant, Tim, John, Carla). We have had many, sometimes fierce, discussions and different opinions but in the end we all are proud of the results and stand behind this new set of regulations.
   
   Last but not least I like to thank our designer Eva Baublis, with whom I work with personally now for several years, for restyling all forms and doing the final language checks, punctuation and formatting so all can be presented in the way it should be and, in my opinion, should always be with all important AIDA documents.
   
   
   
   What next?
   • Evaluate rules over the competition year 2019 and adjust for 2020 when needed
   • Develop some rules adaptations we now shifted towards a possible 2020 minor update
   • Create more visual guidelines / animations how to interpret the rules for judges and athletes
   • Update Judge course for new rules and expand judge course materials
   • Web Hangouts for Judges and athletes for direct and later reference on the new rules
   
   
   Kind regards,
   Technical Office