The FINA Bureau approved the dates, the schedule of events and the qualifying times for the XI FINA Masters Championships that will be held at the Avery Aquatic Center, Stanford University, Stanford California - August 4 - 17, 2006
Qualifying Times
The qualifying times are now posted. These times are easier than the USMS Long course times, however, remember if you do not swim at or faster than the qualify time you will receive "no time" for your effort - your swim will not count.
Schedule of Events
The schedule of events is up. The swimming portion will take place August 4th through 10th; and will include a day of relays. The open water swim will be on August 11th. There are also schedules for the other aquatic disciplines.
Hotel Rooms
The organizing committee has been working with a destination management company to get hotels at a good rate for swimmers. Those rates are only available if you book through the Internet portal that has been set up that has been set up or if you call the toll free number. Once to the home page of the hotel registration select your stay dates and number of guests in the room first then you will get a list of available hotels.(Also the Internet portal works best with IE 5.01 and IE 6.0+) .
Web Site
All of the above information can be found at the XI FINA World Masters Championship web site - www.2006FINAMasters.org .
Vacation destination
San Francisco and northern California is one of the premeire tourist destinations in the world. Besides the great swimming venue, there will be many day trips scheduled for you or your significant other (or children). This will be a great time to plan a vacation to the golden state.
The Organizing Committee is working on days trips and discounted airfares. Announcements will be made as the plans are made final.
michael
Michael W. Moore, president
XI FINA World Masters Championships - 2006
Stanford Unversity
Stanford California
Parents
Former Member
As a live and let live kind of guy, sandbaggers don't really bother me. For the moment, however, I do not swim in heats that sandbaggers enter.
But it is not something that I would do. I am still embarassed by what happened in the first nationals I entered (and my first meet). I underestimated how fast I would go (or overestimated how slow I would go) and got several heat-winner prizes (I didn't sandbag, honest!)
My understanding of the request for seed times is that they are either the best you have done in the last two years, or a reasonable estimate of what you will swim in the actual meet. In either case a sandbagged time is not in the spirit of the event.
The time line affected, slightly, as slower swimmers are moved into heats that should be faster. Swimmers, especially inexperienced ones (or experienced ones like me, but not in distance events) often try to pace from someone in an adjacent lane who they expect will swim at their target pace. A sandbagger certainly messes that up. One more opportunity for a faster swimmer to race against another fast swimmer is lost.
The justifications given in some of the above posts work well as long as the sandbagger is the only one doing it. But if everyone does it, the whole meet falls apart. Many rules and social expectations are set with that in mind -- the violation by one is trivial, but the violation by many can be very serious.
Most important, the whole point of meets is to race against someone. Why not do a time trial some weekday morning, otherwise? The fun part of a meet is sprinting past someone at the end of an event, or holding someone off, or comparing turn effectiveness, or the self-awareness gained as someone passes you in the last length. All that is lost to a sandbagger.
As a live and let live kind of guy, sandbaggers don't really bother me. For the moment, however, I do not swim in heats that sandbaggers enter.
But it is not something that I would do. I am still embarassed by what happened in the first nationals I entered (and my first meet). I underestimated how fast I would go (or overestimated how slow I would go) and got several heat-winner prizes (I didn't sandbag, honest!)
My understanding of the request for seed times is that they are either the best you have done in the last two years, or a reasonable estimate of what you will swim in the actual meet. In either case a sandbagged time is not in the spirit of the event.
The time line affected, slightly, as slower swimmers are moved into heats that should be faster. Swimmers, especially inexperienced ones (or experienced ones like me, but not in distance events) often try to pace from someone in an adjacent lane who they expect will swim at their target pace. A sandbagger certainly messes that up. One more opportunity for a faster swimmer to race against another fast swimmer is lost.
The justifications given in some of the above posts work well as long as the sandbagger is the only one doing it. But if everyone does it, the whole meet falls apart. Many rules and social expectations are set with that in mind -- the violation by one is trivial, but the violation by many can be very serious.
Most important, the whole point of meets is to race against someone. Why not do a time trial some weekday morning, otherwise? The fun part of a meet is sprinting past someone at the end of an event, or holding someone off, or comparing turn effectiveness, or the self-awareness gained as someone passes you in the last length. All that is lost to a sandbagger.
