Good news for all freedivers in the region Eindhoven. We made some constructive deals with swimming pool the Tongelreep which will be a first step for other swimming pools to follow in their footsteps. Since 1998 the Tongelreep has been the place for me and a lot of other freedivers for their regular trainings, competitions and even world records. In all these years I had close contact with all the staff about what exactly we were doing underwater. Every time we had to explain again why it wasn’t dangerous when you know what you’re doing. We almost had to cancel our national championship competition on the day itself, because of the unawareness of the personal and wrong ideas they had about the sport. In all these years I tried to make some deals with the pool so we could freedive and do our thing without every time explaining what was going on, or renting the complete pool to ourselves.

Recently we made a big breakthrough that we are very happy with. The Tongelreep had in mind to forbid freediving all together in their pools (of course not when you rent completely the pool, but we can’t do that always). So we had to make some clear steps to prevent that from happening. After some good talks with the staff, and explanation about freediving education, safety and many other aspects we have now a clear deal with them.

From now on in general it’s forbidden to freedive in the Tongelreep, which we are very okay with, because more and more people are practicing this sport without any education and understanding of the possible dangers of the sport if practiced un-educated. We got some hours from the Tongelreep were they allow freedivers to do their thing, so that all freediving activities during the recreational hours will be concentrated together. On Tuesdays and Fridays between 21:00 and 22:00 certified freedivers of AIDA and the NFDB can come do their freediving training in the pool. Most of the time this mean that we can use 1 lane of the excellent 50 meter pool to do dynamic. Serious static training is not really possible, but for us also not a must.

If in the future the number of freedivers will grow to a pretty big group, we got some other options ready to use the swimming pool and extend the water time extensively. So hopefully in the coming months the group will grow to such a number that we can take the next step. And hereby we welcome all certified freedivers to come freedive in the Tongelreep. Even the non certified freedivers are welcome, which we will provide with a very interesting education program for a very special price. If you got any questions about this then let us know so that we can try to answer them.

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