Looks like it is to gain 20 minutes of rest before doing the 400 IM.
What do you folks think? Fair play or not?
I say anyone attempting the 1650 and 400 IM back to back deserves some slack.
Rumor has it there will be a split request at the 200, followed by splits sufficient to just dip under the 20 minute mark so that this individual is not too tired for the cool event of the day, 400 IM.
So the goal of the nationals rule seems to be having a "realistic seed time" (the "recorded time in the past two years" part just serves as a flag to identify potential violators). The goal is proper seeding to manage the meet timeline. So it doesn't seem obvious to me that someone doing a split request who puts in a good-faith estimate of the overall time for the swim even qualifies as "sandbagging" by this definition.
It's a bit of a gray area, ethically. Doing the event as a split request (instead of straight up) arguably lengthens the meet -- however slightly -- for everyone. But split requests are certainly allowed under the rules.
(I remember college dual meets where a coach would put a person in the 1000 and 200 free, which were back-to-back and would put in a ringer in the 1000 and instruct him to go easy to provide the 1000/200 swimmer with extra rest time.)
Anyway, back to the 1650/400 IM: if this hypothetical someone had just sucked it up and did the double straight up, this whole question would not have arisen. :bolt:
Rumor has it there will be a split request at the 200, followed by splits sufficient to just dip under the 20 minute mark so that this individual is not too tired for the cool event of the day, 400 IM.
So the goal of the nationals rule seems to be having a "realistic seed time" (the "recorded time in the past two years" part just serves as a flag to identify potential violators). The goal is proper seeding to manage the meet timeline. So it doesn't seem obvious to me that someone doing a split request who puts in a good-faith estimate of the overall time for the swim even qualifies as "sandbagging" by this definition.
It's a bit of a gray area, ethically. Doing the event as a split request (instead of straight up) arguably lengthens the meet -- however slightly -- for everyone. But split requests are certainly allowed under the rules.
(I remember college dual meets where a coach would put a person in the 1000 and 200 free, which were back-to-back and would put in a ringer in the 1000 and instruct him to go easy to provide the 1000/200 swimmer with extra rest time.)
Anyway, back to the 1650/400 IM: if this hypothetical someone had just sucked it up and did the double straight up, this whole question would not have arisen. :bolt:
