To be sure, there is a sizeable "it's only masters" contingent around for whom the (b)anality of rules interpretation is too much. But there are obviously also a good many people who take it all quite seriously and would be very upset if we took a more lackadaisical approach to rules.
I am always a little struck by the irony of the "it's only masters" person who castigates for being too nitpicky for excluding his/her time from recognition, "not that it really matters much." To be clear, I *do* think it is a big deal when people have times struck from TT because I know that many take it quite seriously and use it for motivation. That's why I devote time to trying to make the process better. But a part of me is just always going to be little amused by the "you take it too seriously" argument coming from people who take it very seriously indeed.
I may have been misunderstood here!
I take my times extremely seriously! As an identical twin, my whole life has been dedicated to trying to prove that I am slightly more than a half a person, and accumulating TT times is one (perhaps pitiable) attempt to do this!
But I also think the USMS rules can often be a) unnecessarily rigorous, and b) favor regions of the country where it's easy to attend meets without having to travel and spend a lot of money.
To my knowledge, none of my own TT-worthy swims have been thrown out because of pool measurement problems. They have been thrown out because our LSMC didn't opt to recognize the same championship meet that it had recognized the year before; and because I made the mistake, at a LCM meet in Cleveland, of swimming two freestyle events in the Open category, this after being assured by the meet director it would count for TT consideration.
Anyhow, I suppose this smacks of "can dish it, can't take it" thinking, but I do believe it's possible to take masters competition seriously while simultaneously thinking the rules are overly onerous.
Allen's one-hundredth of a second difference calculation in a pool 1 cm too short is hard to refute. But I would argue that there are plenty of pools in my region that may measure correctly but are so shallow that you hit the bottom during SDK pushoffs, and where the lanes are so narrow it's hard to swim fly without knuckle grazing, where the lanes lines are loose and bolted to the wall so far underwater that they don't even stop turbulence from the flags on it, and a host of other less than perfect conditions that make this perfectly "legal" venue far from comparable to the deep water natadorium pleasure domes that other regions of the country enjoy.
Jimmy Carter put it best. Life's not fair. I still think rules more stringent than FINA's say more about the personality type of committee men than it does about fairness in the sport.
To be sure, there is a sizeable "it's only masters" contingent around for whom the (b)anality of rules interpretation is too much. But there are obviously also a good many people who take it all quite seriously and would be very upset if we took a more lackadaisical approach to rules.
I am always a little struck by the irony of the "it's only masters" person who castigates for being too nitpicky for excluding his/her time from recognition, "not that it really matters much." To be clear, I *do* think it is a big deal when people have times struck from TT because I know that many take it quite seriously and use it for motivation. That's why I devote time to trying to make the process better. But a part of me is just always going to be little amused by the "you take it too seriously" argument coming from people who take it very seriously indeed.
I may have been misunderstood here!
I take my times extremely seriously! As an identical twin, my whole life has been dedicated to trying to prove that I am slightly more than a half a person, and accumulating TT times is one (perhaps pitiable) attempt to do this!
But I also think the USMS rules can often be a) unnecessarily rigorous, and b) favor regions of the country where it's easy to attend meets without having to travel and spend a lot of money.
To my knowledge, none of my own TT-worthy swims have been thrown out because of pool measurement problems. They have been thrown out because our LSMC didn't opt to recognize the same championship meet that it had recognized the year before; and because I made the mistake, at a LCM meet in Cleveland, of swimming two freestyle events in the Open category, this after being assured by the meet director it would count for TT consideration.
Anyhow, I suppose this smacks of "can dish it, can't take it" thinking, but I do believe it's possible to take masters competition seriously while simultaneously thinking the rules are overly onerous.
Allen's one-hundredth of a second difference calculation in a pool 1 cm too short is hard to refute. But I would argue that there are plenty of pools in my region that may measure correctly but are so shallow that you hit the bottom during SDK pushoffs, and where the lanes are so narrow it's hard to swim fly without knuckle grazing, where the lanes lines are loose and bolted to the wall so far underwater that they don't even stop turbulence from the flags on it, and a host of other less than perfect conditions that make this perfectly "legal" venue far from comparable to the deep water natadorium pleasure domes that other regions of the country enjoy.
Jimmy Carter put it best. Life's not fair. I still think rules more stringent than FINA's say more about the personality type of committee men than it does about fairness in the sport.
