Who made the order of events for Fort Lauderdale Nationals?

While I enjoy open water swimming, and am a poor distance swimmer in the pool, and am not upset about the event order, I tend to think that open water swims are very different from racing a 1650 or 1500 at a national caliber meet. Clearly there is tension between allowing a large number of people to swim events that take large amounts of pool time and running a cost effective meet. This has resulted in the distance events being scheduled in a way that discourages participation. To resolve the tension one has to decrease the amount of pool time consumed by the distance events, or increase the amount of money paid, or rearrange the events in a way that accomodates swimmers swimming multiple distance events without increasing the amount of pool time taken. Some things that could be considered: 1) if a swimmer is dedicated enough to swim back to back distance events their total time in the pool will likely be longer than swimming the same events not back to back. 2) swimmers who do not make the qualifying times could swim two to a lane 3) in a two pool/four course meet one course could be used for distance while other events were going on in two other courses 4) a limited number of spots could be made available at times optimized for multiple distance event swimmers either based on qualify time, higher cost, or lottery. In software engineering we often say: quick implementation, low cost, high quality - pick two. In this case we have wide participation, low cost to swimmer while financially viable for the host, optimal spacing of distance events - pick two. Of course you don't actually pick two and drop one entirely, it's just that you can't have all of them at once. What tradeoffs you make will reflect your values and different people have different values and make different tradeoffs. A set of tradeoffs that doesn't fit your values can still be cogent and defensible.

While I enjoy open water swimming, and am a poor distance swimmer in the pool, and am not upset about the event order, I tend to think that open water swims are very different from racing a 1650 or 1500 at a national caliber meet. Clearly there is tension between allowing a large number of people to swim events that take large amounts of pool time and running a cost effective meet. This has resulted in the distance events being scheduled in a way that discourages participation. To resolve the tension one has to decrease the amount of pool time consumed by the distance events, or increase the amount of money paid, or rearrange the events in a way that accomodates swimmers swimming multiple distance events without increasing the amount of pool time taken. Some things that could be considered: 1) if a swimmer is dedicated enough to swim back to back distance events their total time in the pool will likely be longer than swimming the same events not back to back. 2) swimmers who do not make the qualifying times could swim two to a lane 3) in a two pool/four course meet one course could be used for distance while other events were going on in two other courses 4) a limited number of spots could be made available at times optimized for multiple distance event swimmers either based on qualify time, higher cost, or lottery. In software engineering we often say: quick implementation, low cost, high quality - pick two. In this case we have wide participation, low cost to swimmer while financially viable for the host, optimal spacing of distance events - pick two. Of course you don't actually pick two and drop one entirely, it's just that you can't have all of them at once. What tradeoffs you make will reflect your values and different people have different values and make different tradeoffs. A set of tradeoffs that doesn't fit your values can still be cogent and defensible.