Women to get the 1500 in 2016?

pwb, your avatar is working! :applaud: swimnews.com/.../9587 It's about time! :banana: There is no logical reason why it hasn't happened yet, but at least it will finally happen in 2016. :cheerleader:

If this goes through how about having women start playing best of five sets in tennis, too? Never understood that one either.

If this goes through how about having women start playing best of five sets in tennis, too? Never understood that one either. Honestly I'd prefer that men go to three sets. :bolt:

pwb, your avatar is working! :applaud: swimnews.com/.../9587This is good progress, but not exactly what I was looking for. I want both the women and the men to have BOTH the 800 and the 1500. They contest both at World Championships; they track World Records for both; why not race both at the Olympics? Certainly, based upon NBC's coverage of Olympic Trials, the argument against both is not because it will take up valuable air time! I really applaud the addition of the 10K open water and would applaud the equalization of event order that this would bring, but, if the sprinters get the 50 and the 100, the mid-distance folks get the 200 and the 400, why can't the d-folks get the 800 and the 1500?

pwb, your avatar is working! :applaud: Back in 2009, USA Swimming shelved a campaign to replace the 800m with 1500m out of respect for Adlington and the 2012 hosts after the swimmer made it clear that she would want the chance to defend her 800m crown at home. But as the clock stops on August 3, Americans will press the IOC to call time on "gender inequality" in the pool in favour of bringing the race schedule for men and women in line for the first time since the fairer sex made its swimming debut at Stockholm in 1912. swimnews.com/.../9587 What a colossally dumb reason for USA to fail to press for change ...

This is good progress, but not exactly what I was looking for. I want both the women and the men to have BOTH the 800 and the 1500. They contest both at World Championships; they track World Records for both; why not race both at the Olympics? Certainly, based upon NBC's coverage of Olympic Trials, the argument against both is not because it will take up valuable air time! I really applaud the addition of the 10K open water and would applaud the equalization of event order that this would bring, but, if the sprinters get the 50 and the 100, the mid-distance folks get the 200 and the 400, why can't the d-folks get the 800 and the 1500? I agree. Distance folks deserve both events, and they are certainly different enough to warrant two separate events.

Surprised this correction wasn't made decades ago.

I agree. Distance folks deserve both events, and they are certainly different enough to warrant two separate events. I agree as well, and while some distance people like doing both, some like doing one or the other as well. I, for example am better at the 800/1000 distance vs. the 1500/1650 distance. Sure I can swim the longer distance, but my splits always fall off around 1100/1200 into the race. THis has been ever since I was in age group swimming, through college, and even now. Another event that I'd like to see sometime get added in would be the 800 medley relay. I know that's probably a really really long shot, but it would be fun. We did it once in college, but had to race the freestylers.

They're tried a couple times now to get the men's 800M and women's 1500M free added, but keep hitting up against the IOC's desire to keep a tight hold on the total number of athletes invited to the Olympics. I think FINA might have had to even carve out the open water slots from the pool swimmer quota/hard cap. A substitution of events is probably far more likely to get passed by the IOC than something that might open up the door to more athlete slots in a specific sport.

It's entirely logistics and cost. The IOC feels like they're at the limit in terms of athlete numbers that they can handle and run a Summer Games up to their high standards. The Winter Olympics don't have the same space crunch. The runners would love to get cross country running into an Olympic program. Since many Winter Olympics are in relatively mild climates once you come down from the elevation of the ski and sledding venues, I've seen suggestions to have cross country running added as a winter olympic sport. There's room at the inns, and it would increase African participation (the Kenyans, Ethiopians and the like are glad to show up at a running event as long as money or global hardware is involved, no matter the weather) so there are a good number of people who say Why Not? I've also heard some very minor chatter about possibly moving a few of the gymnasium sports like basketball or indoor volleyball over to the winter games in the name of better space allocation. Interesting... I wonder what the consequences of switching swimming to the winter Olympics might be?