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"
To aquageek’s question.
FINA (La Federation Internationale De Natation) is the world governing body for all aquatic sports, as recognized by the International Olympic Committee. FINA covers swimming, diving water polo, and synchronized swimming. Within the category of swimming Masters swimming is one of many sub-categories. Each nation with a FINA recognized Master's swimming group has its own National Governing Body (NGB). In the United States that NGB is United States Masters Swimming Inc. (USMS).
In the discussions in this tread, references to FINA records refer to FINA Masters World records (kept only for short course and long course meters events), references to USMS records refer to United States Masters Swimming records (kept for yards events as well as meter events). The rules pertaining to what is required to set a USMS record differ from the rules required to set FINA records, therefore not all USMS records are considered for FINA records. If you want to do some more digging into the differences – I would point you to Article 105 in the USMS Rulebook. The references to “Masters” could apply to either FINA or USMS depending on the context. It could also apply to other governing bodies for masters swimming, such as YMCA Masters or Senior Games Swimming, but I’m guessing that those and other masters swimming organizations were not indented to be included in this thread.
To aquageek’s question.
FINA (La Federation Internationale De Natation) is the world governing body for all aquatic sports, as recognized by the International Olympic Committee. FINA covers swimming, diving water polo, and synchronized swimming. Within the category of swimming Masters swimming is one of many sub-categories. Each nation with a FINA recognized Master's swimming group has its own National Governing Body (NGB). In the United States that NGB is United States Masters Swimming Inc. (USMS).
In the discussions in this tread, references to FINA records refer to FINA Masters World records (kept only for short course and long course meters events), references to USMS records refer to United States Masters Swimming records (kept for yards events as well as meter events). The rules pertaining to what is required to set a USMS record differ from the rules required to set FINA records, therefore not all USMS records are considered for FINA records. If you want to do some more digging into the differences – I would point you to Article 105 in the USMS Rulebook. The references to “Masters” could apply to either FINA or USMS depending on the context. It could also apply to other governing bodies for masters swimming, such as YMCA Masters or Senior Games Swimming, but I’m guessing that those and other masters swimming organizations were not indented to be included in this thread.
