Are there any other sites where photos from the World Championships are available? The www.spitfirephoto.com site has 82 amateur pics, mostly of the backs of people or distance shots of the pool. Anyone taking closeups of the swimmers so we can find friends (or enemies)?
Former Member
Originally posted by dorothyrde
They are doing fly-overs which speed the meet up considerably. Since the timing system is usually set to arm after 15 seconds, you time the next heat to go off, as soon as the swimmer from the last heat touches. Makes things go really fast, and keeps everyone on their toes! Same thing at the USS age group meet I weny to last week.
It was sort of interesting watching the 50 meter events. The next heat was going pretty quickly after the previous heat finished. Swimmers in the middle lanes had to hustle to get to the side of the pool if they didn't want to get run down by the following heat!
iOriginally posted by scyfreestyler
Same thing at the USS age group meet I weny to last week.
Yes, it is very common. USS has a 4 hour time limit for ages 12 and under and you get fined by your local LSC if you go over that.
We always put wording in our meet that fly overs may be used if warrented. Around 300 swimmers, I start time-line watching, to know if I need to stop accepting entries, and to know if I need to tell the meet ref to go to fly overs. I set my heat interval at 15 seconds, and the fly overs usually are faster than that.
Swimmers hate them, timers hate them, new Colorado operators hate them, but they certainly speed up a meet.
I see several wonderful pictures of Hilda Buel at the bottom of page 9. Hilda is an ispiration at 92. The woman helping her is her daughter and coach. I was honored to swim with Hilda while living in Oregon. Go Hilda!! I hope I can swim half as well at her age.
For the longest time at our winter meet, the Saturday afternoon session opened up with Senior 50 free. As the meet got popular, we would have 25-30 heats of 50 free. since it was the start of the session, we are always scrambling a bit, getting the scratches done, downloading the timing system, printing heat sheets, and timer sheets, all the things that we have to do to get the meet going. And then you get slammed by fly-overs 50's, and in short course, Seniors, you are moving really fast through the heats. I begged the meet organizers for years to move those after the relays, in fact do the relays, take a short break to give the swimmers some breathing room. They finally did it last year, and it made quite a difference. The relays gave us some breathing room to make sure pads were working, to let the timers figure out their watches, for the swimmers to think where they were suppose to be(teenagers can be quite spacey!). Still even now, whenever we get them done, and I believe they are followed by 200 *** now, the Colorado operator sighs in big relief, because they are tough!
