I posted this idea on another thread, where it more or less disappeared into the void. If it thusly disappears again, I will acknowledge that it deserves to disappear.
But before such acknowledgement, one more shot. To wit:
I think it would be kind of fun to come up with some kind of "all around freestyle" ranking. Usually you have your drop dead sprinters on one end, and your never say die distance people on the other end. But what about those of us who are sort of evenly mediocre at all distances?
Since freestyle has the most number of "in the pool" events, maybe we could come up with a freestyle decathalon event where you can score points (say, the inverse of the Top 25 in each event--where no. 1 gets 25 points, and no. 25 gets 1 point), add all these up, and get the cumulative score.
50
100
200
500
1000
1650
half hour swim
hour swim
5k
10k
I think all of the above, with the possible exception of the half hour swim, are now official USMS events. You could argue that the 50, 100, and 200 are sprint-ish events; the 500, 1000, and 1650 (and possibly the half hour swim) are middle-ish or shortish distance events; and the rest are actual distance events.
In any event, I throw this topic out for the rumination of my fellow freestylers in the hopes that someone could come up with a fair rating system. My inverse points concept is only one possibility. Another might be to figure out a person's average per 100 pace for each event, total these, then divide by 10--
example--for the sake of brevity, I will just do this for 5 free events:
24 for 50 = :48
52 for 100 = :52
1:58 for 200 = :59
5:25 for 500 = 1:05
11:40 for 1000 = 1:10
total time: 4:54
divide, int his case by 5, and...
average 100: 59.2
Obviously, if we include the 1650, half hour swim, and hour swim, the average 100 pace would continue to climb upwards.
Anyhow, I am not sure how to weight things fairly, but the aim--it seems to me--would be to have the world's best sprinter, and the world's best distance swimmer--end up scoring roughly the same.
And I am hoping that the ingenuity of my fellow math-inclined (and possibly somewhat bored, with plenty of time on their hands) masters swimmers might be able to combine to create a perfect Freestyle Decathlon event as a possible motivation for all around freestylers to branch out their efforts for compleat bragging rights.
Note: you would have to swim each event in a sanctioned USMS meet and/or postal event to qualify. This would surely encourage more people to do some of the longer swims, and maybe some of the distance people to sign up for actual meets and do short things like 50s! A win-win for attendance.
We could call this--for wont of a better name--the Thornton Index.
Of course, we could call it something else, too, like maybe the Thornton Freestyle Decathlon, or even just "The Jim."
Or the Freestyle Decathlon.
Thanks Skip and Marcia.
I suppose if we really wanted to make this complicated...we could take each person's final "average 100" yard time and subject it to the Finnish formula.
This was the subject of a much discuss thread years back, and the magnificent Phil Arcuni created a very fun little web plug in that allows you to "age grade" swims.
You can check this out at: http://n3times.com/swimtimes/
Phil, or another computer whiz, could no doubt create a little plug in where you would enter a swimmer's 50-1 hour swims, do all the calculations, spit out the average 100 time, then subject it to the Finnish formula. That way, we could not only decree the All Around Freestyle Swimmer in each age group, but also an All Around Age-Adjusted (by Finnish scientists!) Freestyle Swimmers in the entire association!
BTW, I am now 55, and I must thank Phil for giving me the ability to abuse my 20-something teammates endlessly ever since he created that plug in.
It's nice to know that when I swim a 53.53 at my age, my friend Robert, 24, must do a 45.7 to equal it!
I suppose if we really wanted to make this complicated...we could take each person's final "average 100" yard time and subject it to the Finnish formula.
No need to take the "average 100," you can use a similar age-adjusting calculator on the Virginia LMSC web site:
www.vaswim.org/.../rcalc.cgi
Right now it is set up only for events up to the 1650 but I could easily calculate the records curve for the other swims -- it works for anything that has national records (though Jason, our web master, may not like me much if I ask him to add it!).
Sounds like the distance people would dominate this event.
I'm not so sure. Say a sprinter beats a distance swimmer by two seconds in the 100. That mean the distance guy/gal needs to beat the sprinter by 33 seconds in the 1650 to erase the sprinter's 100 advantage.
Perhaps this is an extreme example. But don't underestimate the ability of sprinters to fall apart mentally and physically on distance. :rofl:
Sprinters in Masters don't have to worry about falling apart because they'd never dream of actually swimming a 500, much less a 1650. Kid sprinters only do these events if their coaches force them to.
So, actually quicksilver's point is well taken. Distance swimmers would dominate because only distance swimmers actually would swim the entire complement of events required.
sprinters could do a
25
50
100 &
200
calculate the 25 pace per event then
calculate the average 25 pace for all the events
I see no point for sprinters to do those
detrimental distance swims
Ande, I actually do see a huge reason for sprinters to do "dentrimental" distance swims--and vice versa.
It's called: HUMILITY!
Anyhow, in my personal age group--55-59--the sprints are dominated by Paul Trevisan and the distance events by Jim McConica.
Paul had the top 50 time last year with a 22.47, or 44.94 per 100 pace.
Jim had the top 1650 time with a 17:11.12 or 1:02.49 per 100 pace.
Both are phenomenal. Alas, neither swam--or made the Top 10--in the other's bailiwick.
I say that the Freestyle Sexathalon would be incentive for us little guys, with no reputations to protect, to dare to swim all the events. Our humility might just allow us to best some of the greats in the age group who are reluctant to compete in distances where their greatness might not emerge!
Perhaps it could be called the USMS Freestyle Dare to Die And/Or Look Slow Sexathalon With Finnish Formula Adjunct (or USMSFDDLSSFFA for short).
Chris, my friend Bill wrote this little Excel spread sheet that let's you plug in your time and distance, and it automatically calculates your average 100 pace.
Your age adjustment web site is great, by the way. What I would love to see, barring any kind of official embracing of the USMSFDDLSSFFA, is a one-stop web site where you could enter your age, gender, time for the official SCY freestyle events, and it would automatically crank out your average pace, do the percentile ranking for each event, and come up with some specific number--again, I humbly suggest we call this the Jim Index, or maybe the Jim Score--which quantifies your age-adjusted performance at freestyle overall.
Then, at meets, we could argue about who's Jim Score is better, and what we events we need to concentrate on to get that Jim Score up.
Again, Ande: the operative word here is HUMILITY!
I suppose this might be hard to enforce, so if we had to, just to get things rolling, we could skip the hour swim and make it the SCY Sexathalon, which, now that I think of it, might actually attract more interest.
Technically it would be a hexathlon, but obviously that doesn't have quite the humor factor of a sexathlon :)
I'm not so sure. Say a sprinter beats a distance swimmer by two seconds in the 100. That mean the distance guy/gal needs to beat the sprinter by 33 seconds in the 1650 to erase the sprinter's 100 advantage.
This example is possible.
In my case, there's this gal that I swim with who is on the SR I team (she's 18). She beats me by about 2 seconds in the LCM 50 FR and more on the 100 (3 seconds or so). She has Senior National cuts and is very near trials times in these events. Anything over a 200 and she falls apart. I start lapping her at 500s and certainly at the 1650 (more than 33 seconds.) It's interesting nonetheless. . .
Perhaps this is an extreme example. But don't underestimate the ability of sprinters to fall apart mentally and physically on distance. :rofl:
