Well, I'm coming back to swim at Master's meets after a 5 year hiatus (surgeries, etc) and find that I cannot wear my "Farmer John" suit bought in 2000 and worn in 4 previous national meets (except this spring). Not a "tech" suit by any means but a hell of a beer-gut bra! Not sure I would get on the blocks without it so the hiatus may continue. Is it worth alienating us "plus-sized" guys over this silly rule? I suppose it will give me yet another reason to dump some weight. Looks like those other 50+ breaststrokers won't get beat by this fat guy any time soon.
Anyone else out there feel the same? I know most of you out there don't have this problem but to have a rule that reduces participation seems counterproductive.
Lee Rider
Fort Bragg, CA
To the best of my knowledge, I don't believe the USMS rules make any accommodation for exhibition swims.
To clarify this statement in contrast to what I said right after that.... I don't believe USMS rules allows for an exhibition swim within an otherwise official swimming event. It does allow for a meet to setup fully exhibition events, where the entire event is either unscored, or "non-conforming", or both.
For example, we do an unscored 800 free relay at the New England SCY meet. This is because USMS rules also don't allow for time trials, so we have to have an official 800 free relay so that people can swim it officially for a time/record/etc. But we don't score it so that we don't get 4 hours of 800 free relays trying to score team points.
Technically speaking, you could take advantage of the discretion of the Referee to swim multiple events in the same heat to save time. So you could have:
Event #1: Mixed 100 free ("official")
Event #2: Mixed 100 free with tech suits ("non-conforming")
Technically speaking, you could have swimmers in both of those events swim in the same heat, as long as everyone in Event #1 were in adjacent lanes, and everyone in Event #2 were in adjacent lanes, and there was an empty lane between the swimmers.
-Rick
To the best of my knowledge, I don't believe the USMS rules make any accommodation for exhibition swims.
To clarify this statement in contrast to what I said right after that.... I don't believe USMS rules allows for an exhibition swim within an otherwise official swimming event. It does allow for a meet to setup fully exhibition events, where the entire event is either unscored, or "non-conforming", or both.
For example, we do an unscored 800 free relay at the New England SCY meet. This is because USMS rules also don't allow for time trials, so we have to have an official 800 free relay so that people can swim it officially for a time/record/etc. But we don't score it so that we don't get 4 hours of 800 free relays trying to score team points.
Technically speaking, you could take advantage of the discretion of the Referee to swim multiple events in the same heat to save time. So you could have:
Event #1: Mixed 100 free ("official")
Event #2: Mixed 100 free with tech suits ("non-conforming")
Technically speaking, you could have swimmers in both of those events swim in the same heat, as long as everyone in Event #1 were in adjacent lanes, and everyone in Event #2 were in adjacent lanes, and there was an empty lane between the swimmers.
-Rick
