Major 1650 sandbagging by a forum member

I don't disagree with that, although as I have said in the past I prefer to swim in heats with other swimmers who have entered legitimate seed times. However, when others on this forum have posted comments to the effect that , hey it's only Masters swimming (in other words, chill out), they seem to be forgetting that in most cases the sandbagger is sandbagging because he or she is trying to achieve a specific goal in a specific event (eg a pb, an nr, or a wr, which he or she is taking very seriously). Exactly. I would never say "it's just masters." I am saying let people get their times without attaching some ethical stigma to them. We are in the business of getting times and split requests are legal. I don't understand the pettiness.

I will never understand why this gets some people's underwear in such a bundle when more important issues exist like innocent people getting blown up and administrations that can't put two words like "islamic terrorist" together....peace. I thought religious freedom meant we have to treat all delusion with equal respect?

Any swimmer whose final time varies from his seed time by more than 6.626% shall be disqualified. This rule would also prevent (or greatly discourage) reverse sandbagging.

I think split requests are great for masters. We've all got busy lives outside the pool and can't always attend every meet or every day at the meets we do attend.

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: Even though I'm the one who started the complaint about this, I'll argue that done as a split request with a seed time that accurately reflects how long it will take to finish the swim does not lengthen the meet. As long as such a hypothetical individual does not finish last in his/her heat, it is better for the meet to enter a slower heat than do a split in a faster heat, slowly complete the rest of the swim and delay the following heat. However, I'll pose anther question: Aren't doing split requests fundamentally unethical and ego centric; doing your own special event that suits your convenience in the beginning of completely different event for everyone else in the heat?:worms:

Not necessarily. If you enter an artificially slow time, it's likely that someone who did belong in the heat you entered got bumped into a faster heat. This wouldn't be much of an issue in shorter events, but for a 1650, that person might be well behind the rest of the heat. media.heavy.com/.../splitting-hairs.jpg

If you get annoyed by someone putting in a split request, you "fundamentally" need to get a life, stop sweating the small stuff and learn how to swim your own race. I don't disagree with that, although as I have said in the past I prefer to swim in heats with other swimmers who have entered legitimate seed times. However, when others on this forum have posted comments to the effect that , hey it's only Masters swimming (in other words, chill out), they seem to be forgetting that in most cases the sandbagger is sandbagging because he or she is trying to achieve a specific goal in a specific event (eg a pb, an nr, or a wr, which he or she is taking very seriously).

Whom are you guys arguing with? I'm looking at this thread and I don't see anyone speaking out against split requests. You're completely correct. Since I asked hypothetical questions I think they are arguing with how they assume I would answer (which I didn't). For my next illusion, I'm going to get a bunch of sprinters all worked up.

To clarify, I prefer to swim in a heat against other swimmers who are actually swimming that event AND have entered a seed time that they believe approximates what their actual time will be.

We had a swimmer on my college team that fairly regularly doubled the 1000 and 200 frees. She had to race to win some of those 1000's, though, so our coach would put someone else in the 1000 to swim it fairly slow and give her some recovery time in between. Was never an issue with other coaches or swimmers as far as I remember. It's a tough double either way, but I think the guys have a tougher double between the two sexes. Women swim the 1000 first, then wait for the 10-11 minutes of the Men's 1000 before they swim the 200 Free. Men swim the 1000 Free, wait the 2-3 minutes of the Women's 200 Free, and then it's go time again. Maybe I'm just whining now...I'll go home. :)