Enforcement of NQT's for National Championships

Paul, You have an unnatural fascination with full body swim suits. Yes, I bought a shoulders to knees Speedo at the end of Seattle LCN's, and it has been my competition suit (pool and open water, including the Big Shoulders swim in Lake Michigan, thank you very much) ever since. Results? A meet record in the 200m fly, a PR in the 50m fly, masters best times in the 200m, 500y and 1650y free, and a 5k open water time (fresh water no less!) that still boggles my imagination. Matt

How would you arrange smaller meets

Well, it depends upon the local teams and of course the facility needs to be able. Our next door neighbor-SPMA had about 6 meets this past short course. But they have about 20 teams that compete in master events. Some different clubs are more able and willling to do it.SPMA is in an area of 16 million people bigger than the population of most states. In Arizona, the Phoenix metro is about 3 million, the size of Orange County in the SPMA, they held about three meets in Orange County in short course. I don't know if local members can get their local teams to do more meets. For the smaller population states that have maybe 10 teams in the whole state that are hundreds miles apart this is harder to do.

I think we need more smaller meets. But some states have small populations and its a great distance even to go to a state meet. for them. We have a few local ones in the Tucson area and Phoenix Metro has the other meets. Flaggstaff has one meet. The distances between Tucson and Phoenix is similar between LA and San Diego which is not bad. As for nationals making everyone qualifying, I don't know. Swimmers like Ion and Matt would not be able to go to nationals until they are 50 years old. And they do like to swim it. Others like myself who only qualified last summer in the 50 meter breastroke it isn't as important since I didn't even go to the local nationals in my area.

I think that is apart of the soluation. But I do not belong to any clubs . But it would be nice to get to some of the meets that way. But what would we do we a meet like the Nationals?:rolleyes:

C.J., I don't know if the leaders have discussed actually ENFORCING NQTs, but if they have, they have discovered that NQTs in their current form are really unenforceable. To proactively police NQTs, you would have to establish some sort of verification system for times that would be painful and expensive. I think that the leaders see that what is in place now works well enough...members are honest (enough) with the current NQT system that the nationals remain "at a reasonable size". (If not, the no-sixth event rule can always be invoked.)

Sports may not be for the most elite, but the Olympics should be. If the Olympics were meant to be the "World Championships" in many sports so important to only happen once every four years, then the competitors should be ones that are the elite competitors not only in their country but in the world also. Yes Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican Bobsledders were a nice respite from very intense and exciting competition, but the more they have these "wild card" entries, the more it takes away from the amazing competition we see only once every four years.

I think this is a travesty! No more Eddie the Eagles or Jamacian Bob Sled teams? (or was the ruling only for swimming?). Are they a waste of time? On some level yes. But they are also living proof that sports are not only for the most elite. my .02, Chris

Chris, according to the SwimInfo article, this ruling applies to all sports. “IOC president Jacques Rogge parted ways with his predecessor, Juan Antonio Samaranch, resolving the debate by saying the IOC will eliminate "wild card" entries in the Games. Under the "wild card" rule, each country was allowed one male and one female entrant in each sport, regardless of that individual's accomplishments.”

For curiosity reasons, I post that in another world, the world of Olympics, www.swiminfo.com wrote yesterday that the Olympics do enforce now their kind of NQT: .) if a country has many competitors with the 'Olympic Qualifying Time A' in an event, then that country can send two competitors that made the time 'A' to the Olympics in that event, .) if a country has at least one competitor with the slower 'Olympic Qualifying Time B' in an event, then that country can send one competitor that made the time 'B' to the Olympics in that event, .) if a country doesn't have anybody with at least the slower 'Olympic Qualifying Time B' in an event, then the International Oltmpic Commitee decided two days ago that the country doesn't send anylonger a competitor to the Olympics in that event. The Olympic swimming has a different mission than USMS swimming, though.