Who made the order of events for Fort Lauderdale Nationals?
Former Member
Who's bright idea was it to have the 1,000 free and the 500 free back to back with less than 24 hours rest?
John Smith
(1,000 and 500 free participant)
jeesh . .
It is bad enough when the Smiths force you out of the fast heat -- now they are filling up the chat groups?
Fish like swimming? Smith like swimming for me!
Craig, I think you misread Mark Gill’s post. He did not say “the 1000 is the most popular event” and it isn’t. I don’t have the statistics in front of me, but I’d guess that the 50 or 100 are more popular events.
And Craig, I missed your point; are you suggesting that we add a day to nationals to accommodate the 1650 and 1000 on different days or are you suggesting that we tack the 1000 (or 1650) to the beginning/end of an existing daily schedule?
Somewhere in all of the weirdness of this thread is something I think is very disturbing. It is stated tht the rationale for putting both the 1650 & the 1000 on the same day is becasue they are very popular events, and if they were on seperate days too many people would want to participate. The argument is that one day woudl be very long.
This is a membership! We must never forget this. If the 1000 is the most popular event, then the schedule must be arranged to allow as many peole as possible to participate. This is a very arrogant argument.
Craig,
I apologize if I seemed arrogant in my prior post. That was not my intention. Nationals is a balancing act between the desire of athletes, cost of the facilities, ability of the volunteers and time. If we put an event like the 1000 or 1650 on a Saturday, we would probably not be able to offer other events that day. That would drive participation down in the overall event. Potentially, the meet could lose money. It is really a matter of economics and limited resources.
To give you an idea, the 2003 SC nationals had expenses of over $100,000. There is risk to a meet host in running a national event. With all the work and time put in (over 60,000 volunteer hours during the event - not to mention the year and a half of planning prior to the event). As an organization, USMS has to make sure there is the potential for a positive return for the organizations that agree to host our events. To do that, we put our most popular events on Saturday and Sunday (the largest attendance days).
Is this unfair to distance swimmers. Probably. But it is the unfortunate truth that we can't have as many swimmers served during an hour of distance racing as we can during an hour of shorter events.
Some possible solutions that are being explored.
* this summer we are running a 5 day format for LC Nationals. The 1500 and 800 are separeted over two days. The swimmers that meet the qualifying times in both events can swim both. The events are Thursday and Monday. Still not on the most popular days, but it will allow athletes to swim both. There is a higher cost to this solution. Not only is there pool costs (between $1000 - $5000 per day), there is also the cost of additional volunteers, you have to use an additional day of vacation, spend another night in a hotel and eat out one more day.
* We can seed the distance events by time only disregarding gender and age group. Typically this will save about 1.5 hours over an event.
* Some zone meets charge a higher price for distance events to account for the length of time and additional cost of the events. Basically, they price discriminating the distance events. In this case, a regular event costs $2.50 and a distance race costs $20.
* Other have proposed that we tighten the time standards so only the very elite can swim the longer events.
* another proposal is to make all distance swimmers swim 2 per lane to cut down on time. Not a populare option among distance athletes, but this is mandated at World championships.
As you can see, not all of these solutions are ideal. However, it is a difficult problem when a single heat can take over 40 minutes.
In 2003, swimming in 16 lanes, it took over 6 hours to get through the 1650 and 5 hours for the 1000. That was with only 200 athletes competing at each distance compared to over 800 in the 50 free. Now, the rest of that meet had 1600, 1900 and 1800 athletes attending on the following days. If only 400 people wanted to swim a distance event, we would be looking at a 10 - 12 hour day that only offered the 1650 or 1000.
You are right, this is a membership driven organization. The feeling of the championship committee is that only offering a single event on a Saturday would not serve our membership well.
However, we don't claim to know all the answers and try to consider the suggestions made by members, so if you have a better idea, we would certainly be open to it.
I a distance race were held on a Saturday, I would be more likely to show up becuase I would then also swim shorter distances. I can't swim many distance races in one or two days. However, if they are spread out, I can and swim more.
Also has anyone thought about dividing seeds up by days. I've always thought that if the first half of the 1650 were on one day and the second half on another, more people might swim. also, fewer peoole woudl be sitting around waiting for their heet and other events can be mixed into the day better. If I may say so, I think this is a brilliant idea.
When I look at many big meets, I see thta people who swim short distances can frequently get away with being at a meet for only two days. They can swim many different event & different strokes.
Originally posted by craiglll@yahoo.com
I a distance race were held on a Saturday, I would be more likely to show up becuase I would then also swim shorter distances. I can't swim many distance races in one or two days. However, if they are spread out, I can and swim more.
My guess is if we offered either the 1000 or 1650 on a Saturday, we would not be able to offer any other events that day. It could realistically double the number of entries from 200 to 400 and we would go from an event that lasts 5-6 hours (currenly what happens when offered on Thursdays) to a 10 - 12 hour long event.
This would also make it difficult to offer relays on Saturday. Only a handful of distance swimmers would be left at the end of the event. We could put relays first, but if you are swimming nothing else that day, many would not show up at all.
Your idea of dividing an event by seed is interesting. If we do this by time, it will probably encourage sandbagging or entering times much faster than a person can swim to try and control which day you swim on. Assuming people behave and this problem doesn't exist, it would make it difficult to make travel plans until the pysch sheets are posted and we announce the cutoff time that puts you on a certain day. We could do this by age group, but then we seem to be discriminating by age. If not age discrimination, guys like the one that started this thread will be mad that his distance events are too close together.
Still, it is an idea worth examining. We do divide the event by age when we seed in three pools. As an example, in Ft. Lauderdale, there will be three courses on the first day of the meet. Athletes over a certain age will be seeded by time and swim in course C. All others will be seeded by time and alternate in course A & B.
Keep in mind, one problem we have is that both SC and LC Nationals are about as big as we reasonably handle. If more people start swimming distance races, the championships will have to change to a 5 day format or find some way to further restrict entries. Right now, a unique feature of the meet is that anyone can participate in 3 events without meeting a qualifying time. That could need to be changed if we move distance races to the weekend.
I've swum four events back to back at a smaller meet with very few heats. I made it through, so will you. Either quit your whinning and get into the pool and train OR shut up. The order of events will always displease someone. I also swim a weird combo of events, and at many meets go hmmm ... five in a row, aye? Oh well ... It's life. Life isn't fair. You can't make everyone happy.
GOD BLESS SPRINTERS!
Oh, and I did gymnastics for 10 years, and was very flexible even for a gymnast and my breaststroke looks like a frog on crack ...