Hi Paul:
I did attend the International Committee meeting and did bring up some of the issues you and Mr. Goodsmith had. Past President Jim Miller MD said at this time to bring something like this up to FINA you would be "hitting a brick wall". Right now there is a meeting of the FINA Congress to be held at Stanford on December 3, 2005. The only rules regarding eligibility for FINA to consider would be adding the 18-24 age group.
Anthony Thompson did a nice presentation of a comparison between FINA and USMS rules that he passed out to delegates attending. Most of these rules were championship swimming rules and he will discuss with the Rules Committee whether there are any FINA rule change proposals they wish to submit for consideration. Thats about it as far as any changes go.
With the 2006 World meet coming up and the racketeering conroversey about the 2005 LATyCar Championships, USMS has bigger fish to fry and probably won't be thinking about anything else. If you want to know about the any of this read the International Meeting minutes and the latest convention thread.
The 3-Dec-05 is the deadline for NGB (national governing bodies) to submit the proposal for review. Suggested changes have to come from the FINA affliate Member, in the case of USA, is NOT USMS, but United State Aquatic Sports (USAS). The USMS Rules Committee considered a number of issued and will be submitted 4-5 suggested Rules changes to USAS, who then makes final decisions on what to submit to FINA. FINA will review the suggestion at an upcoming meeting in 2006 after the rules are appropriately translated into at least French, and perhaps other languages.
Unfortunately, the current FINA rule on having masters athletes and relays represent a club is consistent with most NGB - it was not considered an issue at this time. Again, with no residency restrictions on clubs, anyone can register with any club within any LMSC, and create any "national" relay. If you feel strongly about this needed change, you will first need to convince USMS Rules Committee. Either attend the next convention, corresponded with your LMSC to be sure you issue is advocated, or better yet - contact our new USMS President and asked to be placed on the USMS Rules Committee. The USMS Rules commmittee does have representation by Zone as well as some at-large members.
I hope this clarify this one issue. Once we have a list of rules that USAS will submit to FINA, I'd be happy to provide information to the USMS discussion theads.
Anthony Thompson, USMS Rules Committtee Member
To answer your question as to LATyCAR, the best is for you to read the Sao Paulo Declaration contained in the WAMO site and then read what FINA has to say in their 'masters news' linked from the WAMO... if you want the "shorter" version of the Sao Paulo Declaration, read the Q's & A's, they should already be up and swimming... it all boils down to absolute control and no right to representation... basic American rights, 'cept you must "... slam the brick wall..."
Regards
David
ps - the brick wall is there just because we chose not to walk around it......!!!
http://www.wamo.info
Ande:
Here are some of the discussions we had last year regarding this subject. It has some interesting discussion until it goes off on a tangent about Marketing and how we need to be better about marketing ourselves in USMS.
