Freediving is a unique sport.Its essence is not only in performance, depth, time, or distance, but in a specific culture of safety, self-control, apnea physiology, mental preparation, and mutual trust between the athlete, judges, safety team, and organizers. For that reason, the question of who governs freediving is not an administrative formality; it is a question about the future of the sport.
Today, there is a paradox. For AIDA International, freediving is the central sport around which the entire organization is built. AIDA publicly presents itself as the worldwide federation for breath-hold diving, established in 1992, managing competitions, recognizing records, and setting standards for freediving education; according to its own data, by January 2025 AIDA had officiated 330 world records. On the other hand, for CMAS, freediving is one of several underwater sporting activities. The ARISF profile of CMAS lists freediving together with finswimming, spearfishing, underwater hockey, underwater rugby, underwater orienteering, underwater target shooting, and sport diving.
The problem arises because the international sports system operates through a model of recognition of international federations. The IOC describes international federations as non-governmental organizations that administer one or more sports at world level. The Olympic Charter further establishes the principle that a National Olympic Committee shall not recognize more than one national federation for each sport governed by the relevant international federation. In practice, this system often creates stability, but in sports that develop outside large Olympic structures, it may also create a closed circle: the organization with formal recognition receives international visibility, while the organization that effectively develops the sport remains outside full institutional recognition.
CMAS has a strong formal position. It is part of the ARISF family of IOC-recognized international sports federations and, in its official 2023 position on freediving, states that it is the “sole world governing body” for all underwater sport disciplines, that it is a full member of ARISF and IWGA, and that it acts under the umbrella of the Olympic Movement. WADA also publicly lists CMAS among the signatories of the World Anti-Doping Code. However, formal status is not the same as sporting legitimacy in the eyes of a sporting community, especially when one sport is only one discipline within a broader federation.
AIDA, on the other hand, has a specialized identity. Its competition rules, performance announcement system, specific disciplines, judge education, and safety standards have emerged from within the freediving community itself. AIDA also has a developed anti-doping programme, referring to the WADA Code, TUE procedures, testing, education, and athlete responsibility. This does not automatically mean that AIDA has the same formal status as CMAS, but it does mean that AIDA’s argument is not marginal: it is an argument for sport-specific governance.
For that reason, the issue should not be framed as a personal or political conflict between AIDA and CMAS. The real question is this: is the development of freediving better served by a federation for which freediving is the core sport, or by a federation in which freediving is one of several underwater disciplines?
The best precedent for freediving is not necessarily to be found in major Olympic sports, but in the example of sport climbing, which is now an established part of the Olympic programme. Competitive climbing was for a long time part of the broader international mountaineering structure of the UIAA, but over time it became clear that it was a sport with its own competitive logic, rules, calendar, judges, athletes, media dynamics, and Olympic potential. In its own history, the UIAA states that after years of tension between representatives of competition sport climbing and representatives of traditional climbing and mountaineering, the UIAA General Assembly in 2006 decided to allow the competitive part of sport climbing to leave the federation; this led in 2007 to the creation of an independent international federation for competition sport climbing, the IFSC.
Today’s World Climbing, the successor of the IFSC, states that the International Federation of Sport Climbing was created on 27 January 2007 as a continuation of the International Council for Competition Climbing, and that on 10 December 2025 it was completely rebranded as World Climbing. Its objectives are directed toward the direction, regulation, promotion, development, and furtherance of climbing competitions around the world. This was done so successfully that climbing became part of the Olympic programme: after appearing as an additional sport at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, climbing was included among the 28 sports in the initial programme for LA28.
This example is particularly important for freediving because it shows that the separation of a specific sport from a broader traditional federation does not have to be understood as a hostile act, but rather as a natural institutional evolution when a sport outgrows its existing framework.
In the same way, freediving emerged from the wider family of underwater activities, but has developed its own physiology, rules, safety protocols, records, competition culture, and athlete community. Therefore, the AIDA question should not be framed merely as a dispute with CMAS, but as a question of whether freediving, like sport climbing before 2007, now deserves specialized international governance fully dedicated to the development, safety, integrity, and visibility of the sport.
In freediving, three levels of the issue should therefore be distinguished.
The first level is formal and legal: CMAS is currently the recognized organization within the Olympic system for underwater sports, while AIDA does not have the same position. That is a fact.
The second level is sporting legitimacy: AIDA has a strong argument that it is a specialized organization that has spent decades building freediving as an autonomous sport, with its own culture, rules, records, education, and athlete community. That is also a fact that should not be underestimated.
The third level is strategic: if freediving wants greater international status, the question is not only who holds the formal monopoly, but who can demonstrate that they best protect athletes, develop the sport, maintain safety, ensure anti-doping integrity, and give freedivers a real voice in decision-making.
It is also important to note that the Olympic system itself is changing. According to reports from June 2026, the IOC accepted changes under which, from the Brisbane 2032 Games onward, individual disciplines rather than entire sports will be evaluated for inclusion in the Olympic programme. This may be important for freediving because it opens space for the value of a discipline or sport to be assessed more specifically: through the number of athletes, global development, safety standards, attractiveness, gender equality, integrity, and the capacity of the organization to deliver reliable competition.
Still, freedivers should not wait for the system to recognize the problem on its own. AIDA must build a dossier of legitimacy. That dossier should contain clear data: the number of active athletes, number of countries, number of national organizations, number of competitions, number of judges and safety teams, record history, medical and anti-doping procedures, financial transparency, governance model, ethics procedures, disciplinary mechanisms, and, importantly, the voice of the athletes. Without these data, the argument remains emotional. With them, it becomes institutionally serious.
The best path for AIDA is not simply to claim that CMAS is a monopolist. That may be politically understandable, but legally and diplomatically insufficient. A much stronger message is this: freediving is sufficiently specific, developed, and global to deserve specialized governance. If the international sports system recognizes federations that administer one or more sports, then there must also be a mechanism to assess whether a specific sport within a large umbrella federation has the right to a more autonomous status.
At the center of this debate should not be a conflict between administrations, but the interests of athletes. Freedivers need an organization that understands apnea physiology, the risk of hypoxia, hypoxic blackout, safety protocols, the specificities of depth and pool disciplines, psychological pressure, and the ethics of competition in a sport where the boundary between performance and safety must be constantly monitored. If an organization that holds formal recognition does not develop freediving with the same intensity as an organization that lives for freediving, then the questions of proportionality, legitimacy, and the future structure of governance must be opened.
The goal should therefore be clear: not a war between AIDA and CMAS, but recognition of freediving as a sport that deserves its own voice. That voice may come through independent recognition of AIDA, a special status for freediving, an agreement on shared competence, or a new model in which sporting legitimacy is measured by real contribution to the development of the sport, not only by historical institutional position.
Freediving has outgrown the status of a secondary discipline. It now needs to prove that it has also outgrown the institutional framework that limits it.
