Wondering what some of the unofficial records are at short-course nationals:
Most consecutive meets attended ?
Most meets attended and estimated travel mileage for all those meets ?
Most consecutive wins in an event ?
Most Titles ?
Swimmers winning a "dceade" in an event - meaning winning a race every year in their 40ies, 50 ies or so on ?
Has anybody won every event (over several years of course) - if not who has won the most different events ?
Any other mosts you can think of ... ?
There have been two ties since 1972.
Hey, I know the answer to this quiz! Nancy Hogshead and Carrie Steinseifer in the 100 free in 1984 and Gary Hall Jr and Anthony Ervin in the 50 in 2000. Interesting that both times it was U.S. swimmers who tied. I remember in the '84 race the timing console actually displayed results out to .001, but the official times only went to .01.
I'm sure some people might wonder, if they have the technology to time out to that accuracy, why not do it? I think there's sound scientific reason not to. Let's assume 2.5 m/s is the fastest possible swimming speed (Fred Bousquet's recent swim in the 50 free comes out to 2.39 m/s). In 0.001 seconds swimming at that speed you'd cover 2.5/1000 = 0.0025 meters or 2.5 mm (very close to 0.1 inch). Fina rules allow a positive tolerance of 3 cm on pool length, so timing out to 0.001 second really does not makes sense since the tolerance on the length of the pool is an order of magnitude greater than the timing resolution. Ina race of 50 meters some swimmers might have to swim 3 cm more than other swimmers and the pool would still be perfectly legal. At 2.5 m/s this would take them 0.012 seconds.
There have been two ties since 1972.
Hey, I know the answer to this quiz! Nancy Hogshead and Carrie Steinseifer in the 100 free in 1984 and Gary Hall Jr and Anthony Ervin in the 50 in 2000. Interesting that both times it was U.S. swimmers who tied. I remember in the '84 race the timing console actually displayed results out to .001, but the official times only went to .01.
I'm sure some people might wonder, if they have the technology to time out to that accuracy, why not do it? I think there's sound scientific reason not to. Let's assume 2.5 m/s is the fastest possible swimming speed (Fred Bousquet's recent swim in the 50 free comes out to 2.39 m/s). In 0.001 seconds swimming at that speed you'd cover 2.5/1000 = 0.0025 meters or 2.5 mm (very close to 0.1 inch). Fina rules allow a positive tolerance of 3 cm on pool length, so timing out to 0.001 second really does not makes sense since the tolerance on the length of the pool is an order of magnitude greater than the timing resolution. Ina race of 50 meters some swimmers might have to swim 3 cm more than other swimmers and the pool would still be perfectly legal. At 2.5 m/s this would take them 0.012 seconds.
