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 . . .
The most beneficial seeding is by time regardless of age. Assuming that there are small variances in seed times within a heat AND that seed times reflect a swimmer's FASTEST swim in the last year. (the accuracy of seed times is ANOTHER discussion and can not be fixed by running it as single seeded event or by age group). Unless you are the number 1 seed in a heat, you will be swimming next to someone who is _supposedly_ faster than you which should motivate you to your best effort possible. And if you and your rival are pretty closely matched you should be in the same heat but as in all things there are no guarantees.
As much as we would like to swim against folks that we know well, why not also look forward to swimming next to someone that you have never met before? Especially at a Nationals event given what should be a much larger field?
Paul
The most beneficial seeding is by time regardless of age. Assuming that there are small variances in seed times within a heat AND that seed times reflect a swimmer's FASTEST swim in the last year. (the accuracy of seed times is ANOTHER discussion and can not be fixed by running it as single seeded event or by age group). Unless you are the number 1 seed in a heat, you will be swimming next to someone who is _supposedly_ faster than you which should motivate you to your best effort possible. And if you and your rival are pretty closely matched you should be in the same heat but as in all things there are no guarantees.
As much as we would like to swim against folks that we know well, why not also look forward to swimming next to someone that you have never met before? Especially at a Nationals event given what should be a much larger field?
Paul
