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World Champion or First Place? The rituals behind competition

No more depth competitions in the horizon of 2020, the scores are set and i take the very first place of overall ranking in Aida International. Cool, i'm happy, i wished and trained for showing some great scores. Many great champions performed dives also, but did not compete in all disciplines, so the spot was left to be taken.


Aida International 2020 overall ranking


So many competitions have been cancelled, so many athletes were locked down in their country or fearing to be locked in another one... Everyone will agree that this year is not like the others before and some may argue that even with just honourable scores, one could score high in the international ranking. That's exactly what happend to me and yes, obviously, i'm one of these lucky guys that could compete in the country they live in.


But the idea of the present article is not to emphasize this victory but to understand what this position of mine really is. Is it really a victory?


Am i some kind of World Champion or did i just get into the first place of Aida International Overall Depth ranking? Be sure that i've asked... and the answer was vague/clear enough for me to wish to push my understanding of my situation a bit deeper. Well, if someone of AIDA board would have said "Yes you can consider yourself as being the or a World Champion" i would not have dived deeper into the question of what makes a World Champion.


What's a World Champion?


Maybe let's see it like this: World Champion is a title and first place is a rank. To be very precise, a person who beats a world record is a world record holder. In a way, he or she is then allowed to call him/herself World Champion. Don't ask me why... semantically speaking that is not correct, but we all accept it because of the recognition of excellency i guess.


Considering depth disciplines (except VWT and NLT where it hopefully becomes more easy), we then could have 4 males World Champions (World Record Holders) and 4 females. Just as we have World Champions for the 100, 200, 400 and 1000m in athletics... no problem.


Then let's add the World Championships. Athletes compete during a week, perform one dive per discipline and the one who does the deepest dive is the World Champion in his/her discipline. Depending how it goes, we could then add 4 males and 4 females to the title of World Champion we just saw before. If the world record holder of a discipline wins this same discipline during the World Championships, it all becomes more simple.


Let's continue.. One semantic detail makes a little difference from the world record holders in this case... no one calls the World Champions of the World Championships the World Championships winners. So by now, in the worse case (or the best, depending on your point of view) we have 8 males and 8 females that are World Champions.... and a World Champion can be deeper than another World Champion, this in the same ranking system and in the same discipline.


If we stick to context of the World Championships, we must then add 1 male and 1 female more, since the World Championships overall winners are also called World Champions right? Eventually they may just be called the Molchanova's Trophy winners... I'm not really sure. Maybe they are actually the real World Champions since they receive a trophy and not just a medal.


So we then have by now 9 males and 9 females that wear the title of World Champion and this eventually during the same year, whenever they are not achieving the same depth nor competing in the same context. In the case of Aida International, i don't even know if individual world record holders are inside of the rankings. I believe not...


Compassionate enough, i won't add to these 9+9 World Champions, the list of previous World Champions that keep calling themselves as such nowadays.


So what about the guys and the ladies who end their year on top of their disciplines ranks? Are they World Champions of the year or just first place in the year rankings? Interesting or boring, up to you to choose. In my case, i decided to stick to the"first place in Aida International 2020 overall depth discipline" rank for the reason which i will underline a tiny bit later. No one can even say i won the overall since there is no real official competition in between athletes that goes on the full year... hopefully or sadly... since we could have then add more athletes to get up to 14+14 World Champions. I'm already lost in calculations...


So what is a real World Champion? ... i sincerely wish it did not take a religious representative to figure that out but here's my suggestion


The World Champion, male or female, is the one who went through "the sacrament".


No sacrament, no title... it's as simple as that. And this is where religion stuff and competition come together.


A sacrament is a ritual, or a ceremony, during which a higher authority confers to the athlete the title of World Champion. In the case of Aida International, this higher authority is represented by the President.


So no World Champions in 2020, because no sacraments of such titles have been perform during this year. Am i getting that right? No idea whatsoever... but no higher authority came to me to give me that sacrament... so shit, i have all the elements to make a World Champion in 2020 but i miss the sacrament.


And i think it's funny since i'm the only certified religious dude of the circuit.


That's all folks

Have fun and keep it deep


Kosho


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