Men's 800 Free Relay

Why is it important? Unless it was set by someone(s) using illegal preformance enhancing drugs, then it shouldn't matter. The fact that the relay set a record is awesome. The fact that they broke a really difficult record is awesome as well. We should be thankful that the Aussies had four guys to due that previous record. That set the bar higher for the rest of the world. :confused: I want America to do well, don't you?

Heather-are you getting any sleep during worlds?

If the US just went out and dominated every race in a 1-2 fashion always lowering the WR and never even making a real race out of it, it would get boring FAST. In the old days (60s and 70s), we went 1-2-3 and it was never boring. FINA and the IOC made the "2 swimmers per event only" rule just for the USA, to make certain other countries were able to take home medals.

Very true...nothing lasts forever. The passing of the torch might even begin with me destoying Bork in the IM 100 sometime next year... :rofl: Of course anything is possible Rich....I mean the world could end tommorrow for example....only that might be a tad more probable than what you have suggested with the outcome of our 100 IM race next year LOL!! :rofl: :thhbbb: Newmastersswimmer

In the old days (60s and 70s), we went 1-2-3 and it was never boring. FINA and the IOC made the "2 swimmers per event only" rule just for the USA, to make certain other countries were able to take home medals. I believe I heard Rowdy Gaines make a great argument recently during a televised event (it was probably ~a year ago). I think it was for something like the 200 fly where the USA was at the time 1-2-3 ranked in the world. The argument was something along the lines of the two swimmers is all well and good, but in a case where the top three ranked swimmers are all from the same country, it just doesn't make sense and isn't fair to the sport. I tend to agree with him. Also, would prevent people like Duje D., formerly of Croatia, from defecting to Qatar. Not like he couldn't make their team, but think of all the americans who could just as easily do the same thing.

If Russia had the three best defensemen in the world in hockey should they be able to have an extra person on the ice during games? And why stop at three? If the USA has the four top swimmers should they all be allowed to swim? Perhaps we should remove the nationalism from the Olympics and just let individuals enter and teams be formed from any mix of athletes? Perhaps the USA should be satisfied that it can draw it's team members from the largest population of any country in the developed world? Perhaps the USA will only be satisfied when the swim teams from most countries have withered into nothing because their NOCs have figured out that they aren't going to win any medals in swimming and so aren't going to invest any development money? Just adding some more questions to the mix. ;) For some reason I have an urge to get flamed into oblivion tonight :D

Perhaps we should remove the nationalism from the Olympics and just let individuals enter and teams be formed from any mix of athletes? the media coverage in the us makes it hard to even follow events that don't have some american domination. imo the spirit of the olympics is tainted by the nationalist hype......still, there must be some guidelines for putting teams together.

If Russia had the three best defensemen in the world in hockey should they be able to have an extra person on the ice during games? posted by Lindsay While I agree that it is probably best to only allow the top 2 swimmers from each country to participate in the Olympics in any given swimming event, I fail to see how this example of Russia being allowed to play 7 against 6 in a hockey game (b/c they have the top rated defensemen in the world) as being analagous in any way to allowing the USA to have 3 swimmers qualify for an Olympic event if they are the top 3 swimmers in the world in that particular event? IMO I just don't think these two completely different scenarios can be compared in that way....But just for the record, I think it would be best for the swimming world in general to keep the rules for Olympic qualifying the way they currently are for many of the other reasons you listed in your posting Lindsay. Newmastersswimmer

Oh, I'll just be contrarian as the dickens, since we have so many open-minded members of our forums: while it would be appealing to the concept of the best competing against the best to have swimmers competing against each other as individuals, we all recognize that economics prevent this. Just a concept, since we are stuck with the 'countries' model, why not just one single rep from each country? I'm not advocating this, mind you, but 2 is also a totally arbitrary number as well, so how appealing would it be be to have just one? Imagine the tension at US Olympic trials...discuss, please.

If Russia had the three best defensemen in the world in hockey should they be able to have an extra person on the ice during games? ... snip... Perhaps the USA should be satisfied that it can draw it's team members from the largest population of any country in the developed world? Lindsay, I understand exactly where you are coming from, but please don't mistake my comments for anti-non-americanism. I was born in Chile and have quite a bit of Eastern European ethnicity in my name (ask Mrs. Swim Stud for verification on that), and I certainly don't think it'd be fair to lump me into the "avatar bias" category. I am all in favor of having as level playing field as possible, but in the interest of seeing the best athletes compete for worldwide glory, I'd also like to see the best athletes competing at the same time. I don't care if they're Klim, Thorpe and Hackett, or three Germans, South Africans, Chileans, Iraqis... whoever! If the top three figure skaters can all be from the same country and compete for the same three medals, I don't see why the same can't be for swimming (not knocking the skaters - i certainly know first-hand how hard it is to do what they do - but just pointing out another individual sport example). I don't think the same can be applied to team sports, however, as there are a fixed number of players allowed. What position they play is another story - load up the ice with 5 defensemen if you like - they'll probably do better than the folks the USA can put out on the ice anyway :p . And on the team sports, I'm not advocating that Russia and Canada send their A and B hockey squads to the olympics either... but they can certainly assemble one awesome team. Re: Developed world; way to sneak in the adjective "developed" :wave: (courtesy US Census Bureau, data as of 8/24/2006): Countries Ranked by Population: 2006 -------------------------------------------------------- Rank Country Population -------------------------------------------------------- 1 China 1,313,973,713 2 India 1,111,713,910 3 United States 298,444,215 4 Indonesia 231,820,243 5 Brazil 188,078,227 6 Pakistan 165,803,560 7 Bangladesh 147,365,352 8 Russia 142,069,494 9 Nigeria 131,859,731 10 Japan 127,463,611