Who made the order of events for Fort Lauderdale Nationals?

Mark: A good start is not having the 3 longest men's events all in a row and potentially all within 24 hours for some competitors. There is a reason the 500 free at NCAA's is on Thursday and the mile on Saturday. The conflict or paradox is mediocrity versus excellence, no qualifying times versus qualifying times. Do you find it "strange" that master's swimming has a national championship where someone can show up, say age 45, and swim a 30 minute 1650? Do believe this should be at a national championship? This weekend is the men's NCAA wrestling championships. I believe that if a wrestler did not get top 3 in the Big 12, the most dominant conference, the wrestler does not get to go. I guarantee you that there are fourth place Big 12 wrestlers that would excel this weekend, but do not get to go. Why is our national championship open to everyone, and if so, why is it called national championship with such built in medicrity- no qualifying times? The qualifying times are very modest. WB

WB, You have touched on a most debatable subject separate from the order of events argument, which is what should our championship look like. Perhaps this is better dealt with on another thread, but I will give a brief answer here. The delegates that each LMSC send to the annual convention are divided into two camps. One agrees with you and feels this meet should be a true national championship with tough qualifying times. (Worlds will have qualifying times for all events at Stanford, 2006, but they are much easier than our NQT's). There is another group that feels nationals is an event for everyone, but only the fastest can swim more than three events. They point to how a championship meet builds the membership in the area hosting the meet. My guess is that time and growth will force us to move to your view of a championship meet. Already, we are having to make our qualifying times more difficult to try and control the size of the LC meet this summer. Our championships are about as big as we can handle (2000 for SC and 1000 - 1200 for LC). If they grow much bigger, we may do things such as restrict the free events to only 2 events. As our Zone meets become bigger, it will ease some of the pressure on nationals as well. As for improving the order of events, I will pass the suggestion along that first 3 event are not the longest. However, there will probably still be a distance event on each day of the meet. If we were to swim both the men's and women's 500 on the same day, that would be a very long event (over 5 hours). To give you an idea, the women's 500 free lasts 3 hours, the men's lasts 2.75 hours and the 400 IM lasts 2.75 hours, the 1650 last 5.5 hours and the 1000 free last 4 hours in a typical SC meet swimming 16 lanes. These numbers come from a meet with only 1700 swimmers. WB, if you want to put together a better schedule of events for a 4-day meet, I will see that it gets submitted for consideration. If you don't want to post it here for public abuse, you can send it to me at mark.gill@usms.org Thanks for your input,

Originally posted by LindsayNB Has USMS considered putting on a National caliber meet that caters primarily to the distance swimmers? It sounds like it would be more expensive to enter, but perhaps the swimmers wouldn't mind, what is a $20 event fee compared to travel and hotel costs? I have no idea if the demand is there, just a thought. In fact, USMS has considered that option. They are called the USMS Long Distance Championships, and there are ten of them. One mile (quarter-mile straightaway or open water course) Quarter-mile straightaway (2 miles) Open water (greater than 1 and less than or equal to 3 miles) Open water (greater than 3 and less than 6 miles) Open water (greater than or equal to 6 miles) Postal 1 hour Postal 5 and 10 kilometer (in 50-meter pool) Postal 3000 and 6000 yard (in a 25-yard pool) ...and on top of those, USMS offers the 1000 and 1650 at Short Course Nationals, plus the 800 and 1500 at Long Course Nationals... I don't think distance swimmers should really have any reason to feel like there's nothing for them.

Originally posted by White Buffalo The original complaint was why are the three longest men's races the first three events, all within 24 hours? I know people (mostly triathletes), who are only interested in 500+ yard events. I'm sure they are happy to be done (and fly back to their homes) in 2 days, instead of potentially sticking around for 4 days. I'm not in that camp. Just saying there are people where getting the events out of the way is an advantage. For my part, I'm happy to get the mile over with, rest overnight, and deal with the 500 right away. Gives me a chance to recover before the sprints. For the sprinters who can't cut work days, they can take an early flight friday morning and not miss their events. (I'm guessing that is part of the reason why the 400 IM is the last event. Most people are flying home on Sunday.)

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.

Lindsay, I appreciate your thoughtful, constructive comments on the issue of the order of events. If I could let me sum up the various positions I have heard from the 1000 & 1650 swimmers: - We want to swim both, not one, of these events at Nationals. - We don't want them and the 500 free crammed into the first few days of the meet, because we will be too tired to swim all of them well. - We don't want them to be the first and last events of the meet, because we will have to spend more time and money on accomodations, and no one will stick around to watch us swim. - We do want the prime time slots--the first events on Saturday and Sunday mornings--and we deserve those slots, despite the fact the shorter events could get in 4 to 12 splashes for every one splash for our events, because all swimmers are equal, but we are more equal than others. - No we don't want to have to train harder to handle all three longer freestyle events in a short time window. - No we don't want to have to pick one or two events to focus on swimming well, instead of all three. - No sorry, the open water swimming is not the same as a pool distance event, and no we don't want to accept open water as a reasonable accomodation. - Yes, we are more than happy to exclude "slower" swimmers from the National meet, so long as the NQTs are set so we can qualify. I realize I am combining the comments of several different people, each of whom has a separate aggenda and proposed solutions. However, these are all views the meet organizing committee has been asked to accomodate. Res Ipsa Loquitur Matt

Some of the most OCD swimmers I know are sprinters. Talk about going over & over things. What about the obsession sprinters have with theri starts!

Did anyone happen to notice that at the World Championship Trials just completed, the 1500 (men)/800 (women) prelims were on Monday (midday), Finals of each were Tuesday night and then generally those same people swam the non-Olympic distances (1500 for the women and 800 for the men) the following morning (Wednesday). The men had to do both the 400 free and 400 IM on the same day (just as the women did at the Olympics and Trials). So even with 6 days of competition tough doubles or distance back-to-backs aren't avoided. As several people have stated previously; there will always be someone unhappy with the order of events and cycling the order at least offers some chance at equity.

I was just looking at the FINA site to see the order of events for worlds. Events are generally distributed very evenly. There aren't a lot of the same type events near eachother. Is there a reason USMS couldn't follow Fina's event line-up?