I was swimming at a meet today, and I noticed that most/many swimmers get out of the pool (or at least in my heats when I was noticing it) more or less right after they're done with their race.
Back when I was about 9 (1993ish), I remember my coach told us before the local summer swim league championship meet (it was my first) at UNC's Koury Natatorium using electronic timing, etc., that it was good sportsmanship to wait until the entire heat is finished with their swim, and then get out of the pool. The reasoning was never explained to me at the time, but I can infer a good reason: no one has to finish the race alone (there are probably other good reasons).
I've generally adopted this practice for the most part when I swim in meets, even though this can impact the operation of the meet (namely, if it takes longer to exit the pool, the meet takes longer, unless you use dive-overs). And this practice can be problematic if you win the heat, and it takes a long period of time for the heat to finish (say 5 minutes). I should also note that I haven't paid a great amount of attention to this, and that the heats that I generally swim in are early heats, which tend to have larger time spreads (which would skew my perception). Furthermore many people who didn't have the lengthy experience with competitive swimming that someone like I would might not know about this idea. And in the grand scheme of things, waiting doesn't make you a better person or a worse person than anyone else--it's just a custom.
So what does everyone think about this kind of thing? Is it something that matters or is it largely irrelevant? And is the practice of waiting commonplace or haphazard?
Patrick King
It's also good to wait until the previous heat is completed to enter the pool. In the distant past (college) I swam a 500 free and then started warming down in my lane since I knew that there was going to be a 20 minute break following the event. When I got to the other end, one of our breaststrokers hopped in with me to warm up for his 200 that was soon to follow. From his perspective, everyone in the pool was warming down, so it was okay to hop in. However, one or more of the end-lane swimmers weren't done racing yet. (It looked like they were warming down, but they were, in fact, still racing...) So me and my teammates in the 500 that day were all DQ'd through no fault of our own. Anyway the moral of the story is don't do that.
It's also good to wait until the previous heat is completed to enter the pool. In the distant past (college) I swam a 500 free and then started warming down in my lane since I knew that there was going to be a 20 minute break following the event. When I got to the other end, one of our breaststrokers hopped in with me to warm up for his 200 that was soon to follow. From his perspective, everyone in the pool was warming down, so it was okay to hop in. However, one or more of the end-lane swimmers weren't done racing yet. (It looked like they were warming down, but they were, in fact, still racing...) So me and my teammates in the 500 that day were all DQ'd through no fault of our own. Anyway the moral of the story is don't do that.
