Aside from the affected meet hosts, the real losers of this dilemma are the swimmers from the two affected SCM meets who stand to lose their placing in the USMS Top Ten. In short order, R&T will release the 2001 SCM Top Ten and we’ll discover who was denied placement on the list because their worthy performances were conducted in pools they believed were legitimate for sanctioned competition.
I do not yet know if I will be one of those people, but I expect to be. You might remember the story of my 1500m Freestyle that turned into the 1550m Freestyle (or rather the 1498.7m Freestyle that was the 1548.68m Freestyle) at the NWZ meet. My time was 19:04.76, a 50-second improvement from my previous lifetime best. (The 19:55 swim as well as a 20:05 swim both put me into the SCM Top Ten in those years)
Many folks in the discussion forums have sounded off about how important they view the Top-Ten rankings. I’ll simply say that in my case, if I had been told by the meet director before my 1500m Freestyle that the pool was less than 25m long, I probably would not have swam the event. There was no other swimmer in my age group at the NWZ meet. My “competition” was the other 30-34-year-olds nationwide.
The impending ruling by the EC could very likely demand that I and other swimmers at the affected SCM meets make a sacrifice for the betterment of USMS. Honestly, I do not know what greater good is supposed to result from locking out certain swimmers from the Top Ten. I do not even know if this sacrifice is even necessary.
The EC certainly is considering the relationship between USMS and its swimmers in making its judgment. It is inevitable that some swimmers will be affected negatively by whatever “final” decision the EC renders. My contention through all of this has been that (1) deserving swimmers ought to be appropriately recognized for there outstanding achievements, and (2) that if we must do harm to swimmers and strain the USMS-to-swimmer relationship, we affect the least amount of harm upon the least number of swimmers. I’m glad that we are soon to be bringing this matter to a close, but I do think that this decision does harm to more people than necessary, as well as to the wrong people.
If it turns out that the 10th place 30-34 swimmer went slower than 19:04.76, I will be happy to congratulate him publicly and acknowledge that he earned his position. If there is any kind of positive outcome from all of this that I can guarantee, this is it.
For a different thread I was thinking about sag when measuring a pool. I remembered from high school geometry the pathagorian theorem (If I spelled it correctly it is only by luck). I assumed that the sag would be close to a straight line (I think it is really a curve). Assume that you have a 10mm sag, create a right triangle, one side is 10mm one leg is 12500mm and from that compute the hypotenuse (if I spelled that correctly I have hit the daily double). The length of the hypotenuse is barely longer than the 12500mm leg and so small as to be not measurable. (I think the co-efficient of expansion or the stretch of the tape would be more significant, but I will wait for the engineers to let me know).
As I said this was 10th grade geometry, by 12th grade I was more interested in getting a date on Saturday night than studying and really forgot analytic geometry. Rob Copeland wrote back "a true 25 meter pool is measured with a 0.1 meter sag, in the tap, the length on the tape would read 25.001066663 meters"
According to Rob, the formula used to calculate the segment of a parabola is
s = sqrt+* ln)/(c/2)]
Where: s = tape distance, h = midpoint sag and c = true pool length.
To Mike Heather who measures the SPMA pools and would not compete in a pool that was one Angstrom short. "You da man." I once made a telescope lens where the lens was configured to a 1/10 wavelength of light or somewhere around 500 angstroms (as I recall). I know what it took to get the right interference pattern to be that close, but to get it an even smaller distance, I doff my hat. :-)
michael
For a different thread I was thinking about sag when measuring a pool. I remembered from high school geometry the pathagorian theorem (If I spelled it correctly it is only by luck). I assumed that the sag would be close to a straight line (I think it is really a curve). Assume that you have a 10mm sag, create a right triangle, one side is 10mm one leg is 12500mm and from that compute the hypotenuse (if I spelled that correctly I have hit the daily double). The length of the hypotenuse is barely longer than the 12500mm leg and so small as to be not measurable. (I think the co-efficient of expansion or the stretch of the tape would be more significant, but I will wait for the engineers to let me know).
As I said this was 10th grade geometry, by 12th grade I was more interested in getting a date on Saturday night than studying and really forgot analytic geometry. Rob Copeland wrote back "a true 25 meter pool is measured with a 0.1 meter sag, in the tap, the length on the tape would read 25.001066663 meters"
According to Rob, the formula used to calculate the segment of a parabola is
s = sqrt+* ln)/(c/2)]
Where: s = tape distance, h = midpoint sag and c = true pool length.
To Mike Heather who measures the SPMA pools and would not compete in a pool that was one Angstrom short. "You da man." I once made a telescope lens where the lens was configured to a 1/10 wavelength of light or somewhere around 500 angstroms (as I recall). I know what it took to get the right interference pattern to be that close, but to get it an even smaller distance, I doff my hat. :-)
michael
