Using a criteria that includes continuous years of dominance, records held and for how long, performance during all five years of each age group swam in, plus outstanding single swims during careers. What swimmers would you rate at the top of the Masters's latter. This could fun hope you all join in.
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I think that is a very hard question to answer since there are so many top level masters swimmers out there......Based on your set of criteria though, it seems you would have to rule out most elite masters swimmers that are below 60 years of age since they can't stand up to some of the older swimmers in terms of being at the top for the longest time stretch.
I personally am way too new to masters swimming to have an opinion based on all the criteria you mentioned.....but I will give two names that I think are near the top of the list if you just consider overall dominance over thier current competition (or over thier competition in the past). I am blown away by Rich Abrahams simply because he is so fast at age 60 and so far ahead of the other swimmers in his age group in his best events.....I can't see how the very top level swimmers in the world at the time Rich was in his early twenties could have been all that much faster than Rich is today in fact....although I don't know the exact time comparisons there. As far as female masters swimmers go, I give the nod to Karyln Pipes-Neilson for just being so dominant in such a wide range of events for so many years.....Although I don't know if she is still competing or not?. For a while at least Dr. Ron Karnaugh was way ahead of most of his competition too....but he is way too young to be considered over the long haul. It is a tough question to pick just one best male masters swimmer and one best female masters swimmer......There are an awful lot of outstanding masters swimmers out there.....The other day I was looking at some of the records in my age group (40 -44).....and I couldn't believe some of the times Bill Specht turned in for example....especially his 200 short course meter butterfly record....Dennis Baker's records are also hard to fathom.....but then again pretty much all of the records there are hard to fathom as well.
Newmastersswimmer
I think that is a very hard question to answer since there are so many top level masters swimmers out there......Based on your set of criteria though, it seems you would have to rule out most elite masters swimmers that are below 60 years of age since they can't stand up to some of the older swimmers in terms of being at the top for the longest time stretch.
I personally am way too new to masters swimming to have an opinion based on all the criteria you mentioned.....but I will give two names that I think are near the top of the list if you just consider overall dominance over thier current competition (or over thier competition in the past). I am blown away by Rich Abrahams simply because he is so fast at age 60 and so far ahead of the other swimmers in his age group in his best events.....I can't see how the very top level swimmers in the world at the time Rich was in his early twenties could have been all that much faster than Rich is today in fact....although I don't know the exact time comparisons there. As far as female masters swimmers go, I give the nod to Karyln Pipes-Neilson for just being so dominant in such a wide range of events for so many years.....Although I don't know if she is still competing or not?. For a while at least Dr. Ron Karnaugh was way ahead of most of his competition too....but he is way too young to be considered over the long haul. It is a tough question to pick just one best male masters swimmer and one best female masters swimmer......There are an awful lot of outstanding masters swimmers out there.....The other day I was looking at some of the records in my age group (40 -44).....and I couldn't believe some of the times Bill Specht turned in for example....especially his 200 short course meter butterfly record....Dennis Baker's records are also hard to fathom.....but then again pretty much all of the records there are hard to fathom as well.
Newmastersswimmer
