I have been thinking about an issue Jeff Commings brought up after the SCY Nationals. Jeff pointed out that he might have gone faster if he had been seeded by time rather than by age. I though the same thing as I watched others, including Dennis Baker, Gary Marshall, Rich Abraham, and others decimate their age group competition. How cool would it have been to see heats of the best of the best go head to head? And the competition would likely lead to faster times, at least for those swimmers who like to be pushed as opposed to swimming in clear water.
But for most of us mid-pack folks, it's a whole lot more exciting racing against our competition than a random assortment of folks who happened to have the same seed time. And often those seed times are wildly inaccurate anyway.
I have a couple of thoughts, neither of which are probably workable, but which might be food for thought. One method might involve culling out the top 24 (or some other number) men and top 24 women seeds from each event and swimming them in separate heats. To prevent gaming the seeds, the race staff would compare seeds to actual times within the past year. The remaining swimmers would swim seeded by age. This would be extra work for the race committee, but probably would not increase the length of the meet a whole bunch, if at all, because these folks would be swimming anyway.
Another suggestion might be a prelim/final format, with the top 24 times from each event swimming it again later. There are rest issues and length of meet issues with this one, but how fun would that be? The rock stars would have to figure out just how hard to go in their age group heat to advance, and the finals would be an all-out blast.
Just thinking out loud . . .
I don't mind if the distance events are seeded by time regardless of age. It gives me a chance to try to race my neighbors. I train with a guy, and we're both trying to get under 5:00 in the 500. Head to head races in season are very interesting. We didn't catch that Federal Way seeded by time, and ended up in different heats, but would have loved to get in adjacent lanes to race each other.
I'll watch most of the 500 races where my competition is if they're not in my heat. I'll occasionally do it for the 100/200 too, but in all honesty, the guys after me swim so fast, its more of a watch for tips on race strategery thing.
I don't mind if the distance events are seeded by time regardless of age. It gives me a chance to try to race my neighbors. I train with a guy, and we're both trying to get under 5:00 in the 500. Head to head races in season are very interesting. We didn't catch that Federal Way seeded by time, and ended up in different heats, but would have loved to get in adjacent lanes to race each other.
I'll watch most of the 500 races where my competition is if they're not in my heat. I'll occasionally do it for the 100/200 too, but in all honesty, the guys after me swim so fast, its more of a watch for tips on race strategery thing.
