Thanks to the efforts of the USMS History & Archives Committee, and the Records & Tabulation Committee, the USMS Top Ten listings now go back to 1971. John Bauman of Wisconsin and Barbara Dunbar of San Diego led the effort to collect and organize the old Top Ten listings. :cheerleader:
The Top Ten searchable database can be found here: http://www.usms.org/comp/tt/
Some of our active Forumites can be found in these listings. For example, search on Allen Stark's name and you'll see that he first made the USMS Top Ten as a 25-year-old in 1974. Rich Abrahams first appears in 1975, as a 30-year-old.
In terms of sheer numbers, it's hard to imagine anyone with more Top Ten swims than June Krauser. Since 1972 June has amassed a total of 1,372 individual Top Ten swims!
So what this tells me is that these lists are preliminary and semi accurate.
I do know that John did strip out the foreigners he could find and also corrected some age groups that were obviously wrong.
It is a lot of data and it will never, ever be 100% accurate, and it will be constantly improved. So it will always be "preliminary and semi-accurate." For example, John informed me that there were "quite a lot" of people without any LMSCs assigned to them. Well, I checked: there are a little over 1300 such LMSC-less swims. Sounds like a lot...but it is only 0.3% of the database, which isn't too shabby.
Improving the accuracy will be an important ongoing process, but "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien."
So what this tells me is that these lists are preliminary and semi accurate.
I do know that John did strip out the foreigners he could find and also corrected some age groups that were obviously wrong.
It is a lot of data and it will never, ever be 100% accurate, and it will be constantly improved. So it will always be "preliminary and semi-accurate." For example, John informed me that there were "quite a lot" of people without any LMSCs assigned to them. Well, I checked: there are a little over 1300 such LMSC-less swims. Sounds like a lot...but it is only 0.3% of the database, which isn't too shabby.
Improving the accuracy will be an important ongoing process, but "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien."
