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"
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I guess that the main public that doesn't swim that much would see us as professionals. The senior olympics lets anyone 50 and above to do it and I have 5 years to go. Personality, I don't care how many people swim only 1 or 2 meets a year. As for nationals, the one in Hawaii got more west coast swimmers and the one in Cleveland has more east coast swimmers. As someone before was talking about the vast distances and expensives turn many people off from attending the nationals. Next year I bet that the short course one in Tempe gets almost all the top swimmers from the states around Arizona and it will probably have the largest group of master swimmers from California and Arizona than many of the recent ones. As Ion states Paul Carter time in the 100 meter butterfly isn't recognized and this is something considering that when Paul was just 18 years old the record in 100 meter butterfly was 54. So Mr. Carter time is quite outstanding in that he is not far off from the top times of his youth.
I guess that the main public that doesn't swim that much would see us as professionals. The senior olympics lets anyone 50 and above to do it and I have 5 years to go. Personality, I don't care how many people swim only 1 or 2 meets a year. As for nationals, the one in Hawaii got more west coast swimmers and the one in Cleveland has more east coast swimmers. As someone before was talking about the vast distances and expensives turn many people off from attending the nationals. Next year I bet that the short course one in Tempe gets almost all the top swimmers from the states around Arizona and it will probably have the largest group of master swimmers from California and Arizona than many of the recent ones. As Ion states Paul Carter time in the 100 meter butterfly isn't recognized and this is something considering that when Paul was just 18 years old the record in 100 meter butterfly was 54. So Mr. Carter time is quite outstanding in that he is not far off from the top times of his youth.
