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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Tom,
Thinking about your question has brought up an answer and of course several questions - which I'm inclined to believe don't have an easy answer.
The answer to when is the fastest swim not a record (this is only an example). Several years ago, if a High School swimmer in a high school swim meet set a record in backstroke it would only count as a High School record regardless if the swimmer was a USS registered swimmer or not, for the simple reason that High School meets still allowed the backstroke start to have their toes above the water line (standing on the gutter) - so their swim was in compliance of High School rules but not FINA/USS so the swim wouldn't count as a record.
Now for one of my questions in regards to meet participation that was posed at the beginning. What if I was a former swimmer or maybe not a swimmer at all, but decided to take up swimming and set a record at my very first meet, would my record then not count since I hadn't met the qulifications of swimming in X amounts of meets before this (hopefully if this was the case I would be able to swim faster at some upcoming meets in the future and have one of those records count). The seocnd part in addressing this is what happens if I live in an area that does not have very many meets or maybe in the case of someone in the military who gets stationed overseas an does not have the chance to swim in USMS sanctioned meet, then what.
Like I said I don't have the answers, but in regards to records - if someone gets their kicks by setting records every five years so let them, I mean it's not like they are cheating anyone out of millions of dollars.
Tom,
Thinking about your question has brought up an answer and of course several questions - which I'm inclined to believe don't have an easy answer.
The answer to when is the fastest swim not a record (this is only an example). Several years ago, if a High School swimmer in a high school swim meet set a record in backstroke it would only count as a High School record regardless if the swimmer was a USS registered swimmer or not, for the simple reason that High School meets still allowed the backstroke start to have their toes above the water line (standing on the gutter) - so their swim was in compliance of High School rules but not FINA/USS so the swim wouldn't count as a record.
Now for one of my questions in regards to meet participation that was posed at the beginning. What if I was a former swimmer or maybe not a swimmer at all, but decided to take up swimming and set a record at my very first meet, would my record then not count since I hadn't met the qulifications of swimming in X amounts of meets before this (hopefully if this was the case I would be able to swim faster at some upcoming meets in the future and have one of those records count). The seocnd part in addressing this is what happens if I live in an area that does not have very many meets or maybe in the case of someone in the military who gets stationed overseas an does not have the chance to swim in USMS sanctioned meet, then what.
Like I said I don't have the answers, but in regards to records - if someone gets their kicks by setting records every five years so let them, I mean it's not like they are cheating anyone out of millions of dollars.
