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!
Yes, we'd like to include postal swims and open water swims in the results database in the future. I don't have a delivery date for that, but it is in the plans. I do not know if older postal swim data will be able to be included when that capability is added.
Let me know if you need any slave labor/help/programming support.
Skip
I have to ask how accurate is this list that is pre 1993? For example did the committee that put this together take the published lists without Errata? My understanding was that Top Ten lists for historical puposes were going to use the ERRATA because those swims were verified as corrected after publication.
When I was my LMSC Top Ten Recorder about 20 years or so ago, there was a list that was published during the year called the ERRATA and that was the swims that were missed for Top Ten that were not the fault of the swimmer or the LMSC. For example, there was one year (1989) where submissions were lost in the mail. I have that list for the 1988/1989 USMS National Top Ten Short Course Yards ERRATA and it appears that none of the swims from around the country that were corrected were in the final list for that season in this 1989 SCY Top Ten.
I have not checked other years, but I am wondering if any ERRATA data was included in these lists. When I was the LMSC Top Ten Recorder, there was no internet and no meet results data base. Everything was done manually. In fact I don't believe there was a Hy tek Meet Mananger program that was for Masters until 1993.
There was probably more errors and omissions because everything was done manually in the early and mid 1980's. The ERRATA is still published after every course but there is not as much data to report because the requirements today are so much better than in the past.
So the question I ask is this just the Top Ten list without the ERRATA corrections that were published during the year?
I was also wondering if Relays are going to be reported? USMS started publishing Top Ten Booklets starting with the 1991 SCM season and have published those booklets every year for every course up until now. I never understood why Relays only went back to 1998, when USMS had published Top Ten Booklets for 7 years starting in 1991.
Unless you were an LMSC Top Ten Recorder, the only place you could find the Top Ten list was in the Swim Master Newsletter that was published from 1971 until 1991 and the editor of that publication was June Krauser, who also happens to have 1372 swims in the Top Ten. Swimming World Magazine published lists in the early to mid 1970's.
Swim Swim Magazine, which was a magazine for masters swimmers published the list as well from 1978 until 1991. This magazine was a private magazine publication and changed there name to Swim Magazine with masters swimmers paying for subscriptions until 1993 when USMS partnered with Swim Magazine and every member received the magazine for free but the Top Ten lists were not included and you had to get the booklets for the lists.
Around 1997, the Top Ten lists starting appearing on the USMS web site. Carl House and Jim Matysek got this started and this was the start of what we have today. The reason I bring up this history is that these lists are great and easy to have today but were not always available easily back 25 to 30 years ago.
So the question I ask is this just the Top Ten list without the ERRATA corrections that were published during the year?
Here is Barbara's (somewhat edited) response to your question:
We agreed several years ago to post the top tens as they were initially published and to insert the errata after they were up with one or two exceptions where there were obvious "cut and paste" errors or the titles to a few age group TT listings were transposed. We wanted an original (as published) top ten to be created first and permanently archived/saved on the USMS site at a safe storage site before any errata were added so that there would be a "before errata" document archived as well as the viewable pre 1993 top tens containing the errata/corrections.
I have been locating the errata since we started this project as has John. We will be assembling them, as lists to start with, so that the changes can be made online to the newly posted pre 1993 TTs. I need to know whether it is possible for versions to be saved/archived so that we can track any changes if necessary.
Skip is correct that there are definitely errata that need to be added to the original list. Addition of the errata is phase two of this project. In the beginning, many were in the Swim-Master as a line of two or three stuck between articles or results. Some were in the published TT booklets, while others were on sheets of paper tucked into the published TT booklets. It will help to have others looking for the errata in case we missed any. H&A and R&T should probably be asking for help with locating errata since having more eyes looking for them will help.
I will assemble the list of the ones that I have as well as those for which more legible copies are needed.
Barbara obviously thinks like an historian. Which is fortunate since both Barbara and John are on History & Archives (Barbara is also on Records & Tabulation).
Speaking of which, if you ever want to know about the membership of various commitees (or who your zone representative is, that sort of thing), you can find the list at
www.usms.org/.../appe.pdf
Thanks for the response. I know 1989 is not correct and there was a large ERRATA and I have all of 1989 ERRATA if someone needs them. 1989 All American selection was based on the 1989 Top Ten final list with all ERRATA included. I found several swimmers that had Number 1 Swims in the Top Ten and they were not named All American and I found swimmers that were named All American and they were not first place in the Top Ten in anything.
That is what got my interest going so I did a little research in 1989 and found that none of the courses used the ERRATA. So what this tells me is that these lists are preliminary and semi accurate. A good check point is the All American selections. Every swimmer must have a Number 1 swim in the National Top Ten to be All American and if they don't then the ERRATA was not used. Or the other way is if a swimmer has a Number 1 swim in the National Top Ten and is not on the All American list, then the ERRATA was not used.
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."
