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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Originally posted by Philip Arcuni
top ten and records do not always go to the fastest even now. Here are some reasons:
One tidbit along these lines that I find interesting: where I train there are several triathletes who never swim in USMS meets who I suspect could easily be top ten. Another *very* fast swimmer is training for some Navy SEAL thing and won't be competing in meets. It's humbling in a good, healthy way, I think: aspiring to a certain rank is fun, but there are always going to be faster swimmers out there (some of whom couldn't care less about USMS top ten), and it reminds me to keep my motives internally focused rather than externally focused.
--Brad
Originally posted by Philip Arcuni
top ten and records do not always go to the fastest even now. Here are some reasons:
One tidbit along these lines that I find interesting: where I train there are several triathletes who never swim in USMS meets who I suspect could easily be top ten. Another *very* fast swimmer is training for some Navy SEAL thing and won't be competing in meets. It's humbling in a good, healthy way, I think: aspiring to a certain rank is fun, but there are always going to be faster swimmers out there (some of whom couldn't care less about USMS top ten), and it reminds me to keep my motives internally focused rather than externally focused.
--Brad
