Fly Over Starts are also called Dive Over Starts.
When all swimmers in a heat finish swimming, they will stay in the water, move to the corner of the lane and remain stationary until after the next heat has started. When directed by the officials, all swimmers will exit the water as quickly as possible, either at the end of the lane or move to the side to the ladders.
While waiting in the water, please remain as still as possible with your legs hanging straight down. Please do not talk.
Dive Over Starts save about 30 seconds per heat. With 180 to 200 heats per day, this can save lots of time. They are not used for Backstroke or for Relays.
Fly over starts (aka dive over starts) are when a heat is started while the previous heat is hanging on the wall, instead of waiting until all swimmers have cleared the pool. Dive-overs allow the swimmers in heat 1 a little more time to clear the pool while heat 2 is started. It also speeds up the meet by about 30 seconds per heat. Swimmers in heat 2 will be commanded to the blocks while heat 1 is in the water, as soon as the last swimmer in Heat 1 finishes, the started gives the “Take your Mark” command, then starts the heat. Once heat 2 is off and racing, heat 1 swimmers will clear the pool.
As I understand it, at nationals, dive-overs will be used in all Free, Fly, *** and IM events over 50 meters, (not Backstroke).
NOTE: All swimmers from Heat 1 should remain in the pool until after heat 2 has started, even if you finish 20-30 seconds ahead of the field.
Originally posted by barryf
When directed by the officials, all swimmers will exit the water as quickly as possible, either at the end of the lane or move to the side to the ladders.
Barry, wouldn't a swimmer exiting the pool at the end of the lane interfere with the touchpad? Shouldn't the only option be to go to the side and use the ladders?
A swimmer exiting the pool at the end of the lane does not cause a timing problem because the timing console operators do not turn the pads back on until everyone exits the pool.
Rick,
Since LCN is using single ended starts, there would be nobody to dive-over in a 50. The competitors are all finishing at the opposite end of the pool from whence they started.
Similarly, chase starts only work when you are running a double ended meet And Chase Starts also don’t work for 50’s. Starting the next heat when the previous heat was 10 meters from the finish would cause a number messy collisions, since the finishing heat will be finishing at the end where the next heat will be starting.
If done well (who generally requies a good referee, and a good timing console operator), start-over-finish can get you down to about 10 seconds or less between heats. At our NE SCY champs, we had some people who (out of curiosity) were timing between our heats, and we were apparently down in the 6-7 second range between heats. That's a lot of time savings over 30-45 seconds between heats.
All modern electronic timing systems have a setting to automatically keep the touchpads dis-armed for the first XX seconds of a race to allow for this feature.
In masters meets, if you need a little extra time to get out of the pool (such as if you need to be able to get to the ladder at the side), usually they'll ask you to let the referee know _before_ your heat, so they can allow some extra time.
I'm not sure why it couldn't be done in 50 events as well, though.
-Rick
Originally posted by osterber
I'm not sure why it couldn't be done in 50 events as well, though.
-Rick
I seem to remember that in Baltimore they did the chase start for the 50s. The next heat was started when the preceding heat was about 10 meters from finishing.
