This is somewhat related to another post I just started (Top Ten conerns). I noticed in the top ten list a number of swimmers (generally very fast swimmers) who swam their first nationals (or any other masters meet) in 5 years due to being in a new age group. I state this by looking at the past few years top ten lists and not seeing their names. Is this a good thing for masters swimming? Swimmers whose only affiliation with masters swimming is showing up to one meet every 5 years to break a record. These records should be owned by people that are true masters swimmers.
What is a true masters swimmers?- Perhaps doing a few meets a year might work. When I swam on an age group team as a child, I know in order to qualify for our championship meet, we had to swim at least 3 regular meets. Perhaps a rule like that for Nationals could begin to fix this problem-
If not, many of our national records will be held by "ringers"
Parents
Former Member
ya'll got me to harking back to a conversation I overheard a few years back at a senior olympics games. It was 'tween a cupla guys who'd been d.q.'ed in the 50 ***. They were complain'n that they were competing against "professionals". . One was a bicyclist and the other a track star. It was about the time Democratic presidential nomination candidate Paul Tsongas, a butterflyer, if you don't remember, was quoted as saying "...anyone can swim breaststroke."
It felt kinda good to be aware of the fact that little ol' me, cane an' all, was being envied, even resented, as being a "professional".
ya'll got me to harking back to a conversation I overheard a few years back at a senior olympics games. It was 'tween a cupla guys who'd been d.q.'ed in the 50 ***. They were complain'n that they were competing against "professionals". . One was a bicyclist and the other a track star. It was about the time Democratic presidential nomination candidate Paul Tsongas, a butterflyer, if you don't remember, was quoted as saying "...anyone can swim breaststroke."
It felt kinda good to be aware of the fact that little ol' me, cane an' all, was being envied, even resented, as being a "professional".
