After just swimming a rockin 35+ (even if we are all older than 42) 400 medley relay, I notice that all of the relays at the nationals are sprint. Why is that? Does anyone have any historical perspective? Is it all because of the time line?
Why not run, for example, the 200 free and 400 medley relay one year, and the 400 free and 200 medley relay the next?
And what about an 800 free relay?
In the Colonies Zone Championship Meet, all relays are included. Zone meets are the only ones I have been to that include all relays. It is fun to swim the longer ones for a change.
Betsy Durrant
I don't know whether or not it is historical but I am almost entirely confident that it must have something to with the timeline. However, I do find it very unfair that the longer relays are neglected constantly. People who are better at longer events never get the chance to participate on a relay...especially the poor distance freestylers, many of whom are probably very good at the 200 free as well.
Orlando LCM in 1997 offered 400 and 800 relays. The meet also allowed distance swimmers to enter both the 800 and 1500 free. It was a very well run meet.
When you say five, do you mean the 200, 400, 800 freestyle, and the 200, 400 medley? And if a swimmer were to swim in the mixed variations, they could be in 10 relays? That is a lot, and sounds both time consuming and tiring. I think the most relays you could swim at Pacific was five: 800 freestyle, 200 medley mixed, 400 medley, 400 freestyle mixed, and 200 freestyle. That is the kind of distribution I was suggesting for nationals.
Phil:
NE SCY Championship we offer all five relays but do not permit people to swim single gender AND mixed relays in the same event (eg men's 800 free and mixed 800 free).
Our typical distributions of relays is 800 free on Friday. A 200 relays in the morning followed by a 400 relay as the last event on Saturday and Sunday. That seems to work well for everyone here and there is certainly no requirement that you must swim every relay. (We did swim 300+ relays at the 2002 NE SCY Championship and our surveys indicate that relays are a major draw for our meet)
Bob
PS: I thought that one LCM Nationals did offer the 400/800 relays-was it Ann Arbor?
The Championship committee will know for sure, but I think that the timeline dictates having only the sprint relays at Nationals. There are the noted exceptions when the meet director has proposed an alternative format...typically because it was either a five-day Nationals and/or there was extra pool space.
Consequently, the Zone/LMSC regional meets have been the domain in which those who want to swim the longer relays can have an opportunity to do so. The NWZ is no different. We offer and allow anyone to swim in any of the 10 relay events.
However, we typically have few takers for the 400s and 800s. (We schedule relays of the same type consecutively; e.g. 200 F/R then 400 F/R then 800 F/R)
I think that there must be some sort of compromise. 800 Free Relay on the distance day? And then every year alternate....year 1 200 medley/400 free year 2 400 medley/200 free. that way every relay is fairly reprsented at the national level.
