ApneaBase.org Ranking was built to help freedivers getting better, and more complete overview and analysis of their performances. It contains not only data from the official AIDA Result Register, but also from many other sources: Freedive Central, Apnea Mania, FFESSM, CMAS, FIPSAS, F.R.E.E., and also directly from competition organizers. Currently it contains 43807 performances from 877 freediving competitions, and many hundreds of individual records attempts. Data from external sources was not blindly imported, but carefully analyzed, and many duplicate entries, misspellings, false name assignments, and other discrepancies were removed. Besides others, 2791 duplicate and misspelled names of competitors were fixed. Redundant data from several sources helped correcting many mistakes, corrupted, and incomplete data.
Credits and thanks go to authors of all data collections used in ApneaBase.org ranking - beginning with AIDA Excel ranking lists, over the Result Register by Simo Kurra, Freedive Central by Paulo Nóbrega and Francisco Gautier, to Apnea Mania developed by the team of Bill Strömberg. Credits and thanks belong also to Bill Strömberg, Christian Engelbrecht, Jonas Andersson, Pim Vermeulen, and others who participated on the data harvesting and maintenance of the original sources. And I want to send special thanks to Simo for adding an API to the AIDA Result Register, allowing so easier access to the part of the data AIDA already had.
Newly, I also included data of several previously unavailable freediving competitions from Russian speaking countries. This could be done thank to the amazing database of a Russian freediver with the alias "Tema". Big thanks belong also to Igor Migunov who provided the tip, and who continuously helps with completing missing data, and reporting errors and other problems in the ranking!
The system of ranking offers many different reports - from official ranking, over ranking combining data from AIDA, together with data of other AIDA competitions from other sources, to ranking including national, local, or unofficial competitions, and even performances from competitions of other organizations (for example the CMAS or the FFESSM). It is up to the user to choose the data to work with. And of course, if you know about data that are not yet in the ApneaBase.org database, do not hesitate to contact me.
Besides the usual global rankings per discipline, there are also many other types of reports, including some that were done just for fun, or to feed data and statistics junkies like myself. So you can find reports based on the total time spent in apnea; the total distance swam under water (both vertically and horizontally), ranking by number of blackouts, and disqualifications; ranking using dynamically adjusted point values; and many others. And then, each of the reports can be run not only in the global scope, but also on continental, regional, national, local, or club level. And you can also compare continents, regions, nations, cities, clubs, or federations among each other.
If you are a member of a freediving club, you can get it listed automatically in the ranking. Simply register at ApneaBase.org (if you did not yet), and found a "team" on the Teams page. This function is currently reserved to paying members only, but if your club cannot afford paying the one-time fee, please contact me. Otherwise, if you want to upgrade your free account, you can do it on the Profile page - just click the "upgrade" link below your user name, at the top of the form. All other members of the club can join it with the plain free account. The ApneaBase.org team will then not only appear in the ranking, but it comes also with many other features, including an own website with advanced club management features, forum, gallery, own ranking, blog, and much more.
