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.
And I don't think all split requests are created equal. Let's say a meet has the 500 as the first event and someone puts in a split request for the 100. They enter with something like 10:00 and proceed to rocket out to a sub 50 second 100, probably darn near lapping everyone else in the heat because the actual 100 free event is a couple hours later and they don't want to wait. OK, go for it if you want, but that seems a lot more questionable than someone doing a split request because the event they'd like to swim is a couple DAYS later like the example Rich gave of Paul Smith at Nationals.
And I don't think all split requests are created equal. Let's say a meet has the 500 as the first event and someone puts in a split request for the 100. They enter with something like 10:00 and proceed to rocket out to a sub 50 second 100, probably darn near lapping everyone else in the heat because the actual 100 free event is a couple hours later and they don't want to wait. OK, go for it if you want, but that seems a lot more questionable than someone doing a split request because the event they'd like to swim is a couple DAYS later like the example Rich gave of Paul Smith at Nationals.
