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.
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NotVeryFast - I dispute your assertion. While a country's size means there are more people it in no way translates to success. Take China and India on one extreme with relatively weak programs versus Jamaica and Australia on the other hand with great programs. Britain's complete absence from discussion on sports these days is more indicative of poor programs and a lack of focus on athletics than some population argument.
I explicitly said that population isn't the only factor. But whatever factors are leading to success at USMS Record level in the US, do those same factors not also improve standards at a lower level? Or do the USMS national record holders have exclusive access to a source of better performance?
An example of where elite performance does not translate into better performance for the whole population is elite cycling in GB, where the resources are focused on a tiny handful of cyclists, whose level of performance cannot be matched by those who don't have access to those resources. I doubt that this situation applies to USMS, though.
And regarding your observations on relative strength of programs, GB were 4th in the Olympic medal table, ahead of the "great" programs of Jamaica and Australia, and the US finished 2nd behind the "weak" program of China.
NotVeryFast - I dispute your assertion. While a country's size means there are more people it in no way translates to success. Take China and India on one extreme with relatively weak programs versus Jamaica and Australia on the other hand with great programs. Britain's complete absence from discussion on sports these days is more indicative of poor programs and a lack of focus on athletics than some population argument.
I explicitly said that population isn't the only factor. But whatever factors are leading to success at USMS Record level in the US, do those same factors not also improve standards at a lower level? Or do the USMS national record holders have exclusive access to a source of better performance?
An example of where elite performance does not translate into better performance for the whole population is elite cycling in GB, where the resources are focused on a tiny handful of cyclists, whose level of performance cannot be matched by those who don't have access to those resources. I doubt that this situation applies to USMS, though.
And regarding your observations on relative strength of programs, GB were 4th in the Olympic medal table, ahead of the "great" programs of Jamaica and Australia, and the US finished 2nd behind the "weak" program of China.
