Major 1650 sandbagging by a forum member

Now if a swimmer for whatever reason deliberately enters a seed time that is significantly slower than what he or she expects to swim (notice that I did not use the inflammatory term which I have forsworn), then surely he or she will remain in the water until the slower swimmers in the heat have all finished. In the spirit of camaraderie.

Camaraderie. Learn it, live it. Yes, I did stay in the water until the heat was finished. Like I said, I didn't beat most of them by much. Three of us were under 15 minutes, three under 14 minutes. All entered at least 15 minutes. It was a championship meet, aren't time drops to be expected? I also had the 100 backstroke to swim in the next event. Sanbagging or strategic entry. Not a crime, no victims. Plenty of histrionics.

Which begs the question, why do we even bother seeding events? As I suggested on another thread, we could just allow swimmers to choose their heat and their lane like the airlines do for on line seat selection. And we could charge more for "prime" lanes and heats. that is a very interesting idea. would i pay more or less (or zero) extra, if i enter with my actual best time?

I just don't feel like competing against people who take it too seriously. The slower heats have a camaraderie, or feeling of participation rather than head to head competition. So you compete, but you don't like competition. OK then.

An incomplete summer reading list for sandbaggers and those who wish to understand them… The Art of Sandbagging Diary of a Mad S-Bagger How to Live With a Sandbagging Spouse A Meet Director Guide to Sandbaggery Fifty Shades of Sandbagging

I can see that sandbagging and requesting splits might be seen as having a similar effect on length of meet,but I am not sure that is true.If you get a split request because the event you want is at an inconvenient time and so you swim one less event, then you may actually be speeding up the the meet.For me anyway the time consideration seems only important for the really big meets.Most local meets go "too fast" so there is not enough time between events. My pet peeve is combining heats.I have a pretty set "ritual" I go through starting 30 min before an event.For that 30 min to suddenly be 25 with the last 5 minutes disappearing 1 minute before I swim is disconcerting at best.Besides,I enjoy all the rest I can get. In fact for small meets if you can sandbag,slow the meet down, and give me more rest between events please do so.

Can't we all just get along? Afterall, sprinters have too much testosterone to admit to any wrong doing. Distance swimmers have killed too many brain cells by spending so much time in the water to admit that sprinters do provide them some rest at meets,esp. when split requests come into play.

Distance swimmers, those of swimming purity In retrospect, I'm going to back off a bit from my earlier statement of congeniality regarding split requests. Meet Directors do their best to schedule events as best they can to accommodate common multi event combinations (50 Free & 100 Free, not 50 *** and 1650). It's rather disrespectful for an individual to change the event lineup based on personal convenience. I was unpleasantly surprised to discover how big the drop off is for a second event the same day at my age, but isn't part of the challenge of swimming to do your best in multiple events? The last meet I went to my times were all over the board, but I thought it was kind of cool to do the 200,400,800,1500 Free and 200 Fly and have every swim make last year's Top Ten.

I sandbagged my time for the 1000 today (by about 2 minutes) and won my heat... Which begs the question, why do we even bother seeding events? As I suggested on another thread, we could just allow swimmers to choose their heat and their lane like the airlines do for on line seat selection. And we could charge more for "prime" lanes and heats.

...but I was in a heat with 7 other sandbaggers so I didn't win by much. According to the meet results, there were six other swimmers in your heat (one scratched). You lapped four of them. And I'm not sure you can call them sandbaggers when three of them had never swum the 1000 before.