I know that I have seen others talk about "how good am I if I swim the 200 in this time", or "if my mile is 17min".
and then the responses are typically, look at results from previous meets, or last years top 10 time.
But does anyone try to take into account how many actually swim that event/distance? Is one a good swimmer merely because only 12 people swim the 400 IM.
I looked at the 2007 top 10 SCM for Men 30-34. for *** and IM I would have been top 10 in 3 of 6 events/distances.
50 br 33.37 outside of top 10
100br 1:14.08 (10)
200br 2:42.20 (7)
400 IM 5:19.71 (7)
but how many 30-34 competed in those events in 2007? I would guess that more people competed in 2006 at the World Championships in Cali.
In Sweden I have top 10 times in nearly everything but 50-100 free, but that is only because it's not too often that there are more than 10-12 swimmers in my age grupp. I know of 4-6 swimmers that will be 35-39 in 2010 and all of them are significanly faster than me, just not sure swimming at the Worlds is something they plan on doing.
I recently looked at a German time standard, since they had one for every year 11-18 and then an open I used the open table. The table was scaled to 1-20. 20 being the fastest. something simliar to the US AAAA standards but with more divisions. I was at best 6 of a possible 20 in Breaststroke. and not even 1 in Back and Fly. and between 1-2 for Free and IM. to me that seems more like a realistic measurement of my ability.
Parents
Former Member
I see where some of the disconnect is.
In reviewing the Great Britain records with the US masters swimming records, they aren't comparable. Generally speaking (and there are a few exceptions), the US records are significantly faster. I could totally see Great Britain records being broken in practice. My meet times this past LCM season would qualify me for several GB national records where I'm not very close to US nat records. So I think it depends on what country you are swimming in.
While it is true that the US records will typically be faster than the GB records, I think it is comparing like with like to look at training performances of GB swimmers relative to GB records. There may be other reasons for the US records being faster, but a major factor will be the bigger population. The bigger population will make the records faster, but it will also give you a correspondingly bigger pool of people from which to find people who can break the records in practice. So I think the two things ought to cancel out, and you should have a similar chance of finding a US swimmer who can break a US record in practice, compared with the chance of finding a GB swimmer who can break a GB record in practice.
I see where some of the disconnect is.
In reviewing the Great Britain records with the US masters swimming records, they aren't comparable. Generally speaking (and there are a few exceptions), the US records are significantly faster. I could totally see Great Britain records being broken in practice. My meet times this past LCM season would qualify me for several GB national records where I'm not very close to US nat records. So I think it depends on what country you are swimming in.
While it is true that the US records will typically be faster than the GB records, I think it is comparing like with like to look at training performances of GB swimmers relative to GB records. There may be other reasons for the US records being faster, but a major factor will be the bigger population. The bigger population will make the records faster, but it will also give you a correspondingly bigger pool of people from which to find people who can break the records in practice. So I think the two things ought to cancel out, and you should have a similar chance of finding a US swimmer who can break a US record in practice, compared with the chance of finding a GB swimmer who can break a GB record in practice.
