2009 Duel in the Pool
American Swimming Stars to Take On European Select Team at the 2009 Mutual of Omaha Duel in the Pool
Event to be held
Friday December 18 7:00pm & Saturday December 19 2009, 2:30pm
Broadcast on NBC on December 27
Location: Manchester Aquatic Centre, in Manchester, England,
Format
The competition will be a dual-meet competition with 13 men’s and 13 women’s events and two relays for both men and women.
Each team will have up to eighteen (18) women and eighteen (18) men. The combined team of Germany, Great Britain and Italy will be permitted to have up to six (6) women and six (6) men from each of the countries.
A running score will be kept combining the points earned by both women and men.
The course for the competition will be 25 meters (short course).
A swimmer can enter up to six events during the meet – any combination of individual and relay events.
Events
Fri December 18
400 Medley Relay – Women
400 Medley Relay – Men
400 IM – Women
400 IM – Men
100 Free – Women
100 Free – Men
200 Back – Women
200 Back – Men
200 *** – Women
200 *** – Men
100 Fly – Women
100 Fly – Men
400 Free – Women
400 Free – Men
Saturday December 19
800 Free – Women
800 Free - Men
200 Free – Women
200 Free – Men
100 Back – Women
100 Back – Men
100 *** – Women
100 *** – Men
200 Fly – Women
200 Fly – Men
50 Free – Women
50 Free – Men
200 IM – Women
200 IM – Men
400 Free Relay – Women
400 Free Relay – Men
Scoring in the individual events will be:
1st Place 5 points
2nd Place 3 points
3rd Place 1 point
4th Place 0 points
5th Place 0 points
6th Place 0 points
Scoring in the relay events will be:
1st Place 7 points
2nd Place 0 points
Tie Breaker
In the case of a tie, there will be a 4 x 50 Medley Relay with two men and two women from each team on the relay.
This tie-breaker relay will be worth one point.
The team that wins this relay will be declared the winner of the meet.
Former Member
I think it's funny in little posts where people like Ariana Kukors and Katie Hoff are getting some credit for taking supposed "moral highground" by wearing 2010 compliant suits.
A.Kukors signed with TYR, who has no suit. I doubt she is not wearing the "old-new" suits by choice, she is doing it to keep her paycheck. Smart move.
K.Hoff didn't have a great meet in a LZR at World Trials, so there's no benefit for her to wear it again. If she wore it and lost, people would throw out nonsense that "she's done" when, in reality, she appears to be doing quite fine.
I think this demonstrates how important NCAA swimming competition is for the US advantage. It keeps many more swimmers in competition at the elite level into their 20s than in most other countries and breeds short course and racing skills. No surprise that so many non-US swimmers choose to progress their careers in the US.
Wasn't the Tyr Titan (or something with a similar name) an impermeable suit? I was at a USA-S meet in the spring and could have sworn I saw a college kid wearing a Tyr suit that was similar in nature to B70 and the like.
I should have said, "No shiny suit that was approved to ever be worn." Since remember how TYR got screwed by being banned when the Jaked and X-Glide were OK'd
Are any of the US swimmers wearing tech suits?
As Chris S noted in his post above, Craig Lord is covering the event closely. Given CL's hatred of the tech suits, he is noting which athletes are wearing "shiny" ie tech, suits.
www.swimnews.com/.../7378
If you can look past the suit rhetoric (which is very tiresome), Lord has a decent recap that's easier to deal with than the Omega website with all that clicking.
www.swimnews.com/.../7374
After today: USA 89, E-Stars 33
Glad I'm not the only one annoyed by Omega's interface. I'm sure they could have factored in a way to squeeze one more click out of us for the privilege of simply viewing finals results, but at the moment I'm at a loss to figure out how.
According to the commentary in the US federation will not recognise records set in non-2010 compliant suits at this meet. This means that American swimmers are setting World but not American records at this meet!
Two main things have become apparent during session 1:
The depth of American swimming is far greater than in Europe. Phelps is not at his fastest (although he gave yet another lesson in how to finish and win a fly race) but there are so many swimmers able to step up to the mark.
The Americans are better at starting and, in particular, turning (all strokes) and consequently better at short course racing. This is remarkable because there are so few long course pools in the UK, you'd think we would be pretty well sorted on turns.
Hope to see the US team back over here between now and the London Olympics.
