When is it OK to disallow swims

Am I the criminal being kept in or released from jail? Is the penalty worthy of my crime? Does the prosecutor deserve any blame for withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense? Is ignorance of the law no excuse when the law is ignored by those whose job it is to enforce it? I am seriously confounded by this argument! Unless you mean that Greg Shaw, elevated to first place, is the unjustly imprisoned criminal released from the damnation of a No. 2 ranking when the criminal machinations of Jim Thornton have been revealed, perhaps after the statute of limitations has run out, perhaps not? Perhaps you might consider amending your tag line to read: It's like reality, only magic. Really? That is the best you could do? I am not going to bother pointing out the obvious parallels, but that last part was just petty. I guess I should expect nothing more.

Wow. 80% of the respondents to the poll think that, by logical extension, when new evidence is found, a convicted felon should stay in jail. There is little difference from that argument to the ones being made here. Am I the criminal being kept in or released from jail? Is the penalty worthy of my crime? Does the prosecutor deserve any blame for withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense? Is ignorance of the law no excuse when the law is ignored by those whose job it is to enforce it? I am seriously confounded by this argument! Unless you mean that Greg Shaw, elevated to first place, is the unjustly imprisoned criminal released from the damnation of a No. 2 ranking when the criminal machinations of Jim Thornton have been revealed, perhaps after the statute of limitations has run out, perhaps not? Perhaps you might consider amending your tag line to read: It's like reality, only magic.

vanity aging. That's when (usually middle-aged) swimmers enter a younger age than their actual years.. Never really understood this. Seems to me it's just setting yourself up for people saying "wow, he/she looks a lot older than that!" But back to statute of limitations on TT times. You know, I think most people are responding to the poll with Jim's situation in mind, but there are other things that can happen. For example, I swam at SPMA LC championships a few years ago and the scoreboard said I went a 4:27 in my 400 free. I knew I was really more like 4:34 based on the times of a couple other swimmers I was right with. The backup timers screwed up and just wrote down exactly what the readout board said, so that didn't help. If I hadn't said anything about it I'm absolutely sure that time would have stood unless someone else complained and even then what could they do? The electronic timing had me down at 4:27. What they ended up doing is throwing that time out and letting me swim it again at the end of the day. What if someone found out, after the results were official, that someone used paddles to swim the One Hour Postal? Would you want that result to stand just because the results were already official? There are all kinds of possible scenarios. I think the only fair thing to do is throw out any times that are known to not comply with USMS rules when the swim took place.

Never really understood this. Seems to me it's just setting yourself up for people saying "wow, he/she looks a lot older than that!"I've seen a master's coach get pretty worked up over losing an IM relay and rearrange his swimmers to ensure he won the free relay in that age group the next day (perfectly legitimate). Meet points seem to matter a lot to some people... nothing wrong with that. I suppose it's possible a misguided swimmer could take it a step further and sign up for a different age group knowing that it is less populated and thus provides a better chance for winning a race.

Wow. 80% of the respondents to the poll think that, by logical extension, when new evidence is found, a convicted felon should stay in jail. There is little difference from that argument to the ones being made here.

I would say that 80% of the respondents believe that Jim acted in good faith and is being unfairly penalized by the actions or omissions of others within the organization. The meet was sanctioned by USMS. He received assurances from the meet organizers that his times would count for top ten consideration. And his name appeared in the finalized rankings.

I'm sure you would and most people would. Yeah, there are always going to be the Rosie Ruiz' out there, but really what's the point in getting an accolade you don't deserve? I'd never be able to live with myself. How about if it was the Daily Double and you wagered all of it for $8,000 or so, and got it right but forgot to phrase it as a question? Maybe Mr. Trebek could let it slide... ;)

Really? That is the best you could do? No, Jim can do better. But for the sake of keeping this thread somewhat on track, I sincerely hope Jim refrains from unleashing WMD's from his literary arsenal.

Okay, super simple solution to this- how about just not accepting swims that come from pools with no measurement on file (for fixed wall pools) or not accompanied by pool length certification forms (for bulkheaded pools)? Well that is already the rule, it is just how you interpret "on file with USMS," which is the phrase used in the rule book for both records and TT. Our current practice is basically: for records it means it must be in the central database, for non-record TTs it means on file with the LMSC (which are of course part of USMS). Your suggestion is the direction we're heading. But IMO it would be too disruptive to do it all at once. Many meets would be excluded if we implemented that policy immediately and strictly; the outcry would likely dwarf what we have here. It isn't JUST a matter of work, getting all 52 LMSCs to change abruptly really is like herding cats. (But many of them DO in fact currently send in their measurements anyway.) I think the national certification database needs to be cleaned up before it can play a bigger role. Right now the TTRs are reviewing the database and comparing it to their records, making corrections and sending in new info as they can. Consolidating records between a national database and 52 LMSCs is not a quick process, especially when some of the files in the LMSCs are old and undoubtedly lost due to TTR turnover. (And not all LMSCs use TTRs for this task anyway.) And just this year we also changed the policy and the Guide To Operations for TTRs so that all new pool certifications, not just for pools that had records set, should be sent into Walt so that he can add them to the database. Walt tells me that these two changes have resulted in a surge of submissions of measurements to him; it's a start. Maybe full implementation in E2EEM is not needed but it would help a lot. At the very least having the certification info in a real database, accessed thru a web form, would be a vast improvement over what we have now: an Excel spreadsheet that some people have trouble reading. The reason E2EEM implementation would be helpful is, among other things, it would standardize LMSC practices and (hopefully) force everybody to input measurements. Realize also that currently the single most common "violation" of the LMSC Standards (ie, USMS' "best practices" document) is the timely uploading of meet results. I may be misremembering, but someone at Convention told me that compliance with the results standard (S8 on the standards document) is something like 50-60% by LMSC. Adding additional measurement requirements to the process thru E2EEM (ie, measurements must be included with the results) would make things worse.

Kirk I applaud your honesty in getting your "too fast"time removed.I hope I would have been that honest. I'm sure you would and most people would. Yeah, there are always going to be the Rosie Ruiz' out there, but really what's the point in getting an accolade you don't deserve? I'd never be able to live with myself.