I am posting this as an informational item only. If you guys want to start another tech suit flame war over this, have at it, but I won't be participating.
Yesterday, I received an email which stated:
United States Masters Swimming is considering whether to allow Tech Suits (ie Blue 70, Speedo Fastskins, etc ) at short course yards meets.
Pacific Masters is polling swimmers who registered for the 2010 Pacific Masters Short Course Championships to find out what our swimmer's opinion is of this proposed rule change. The polling will close at noon, Tuesday September 7th.
This poll should take less than five minutes to complete. We do value your opinion, we hope to find out more about what our members think.
Unfortunately, having responded to the poll questions I can no longer access the poll, or I would post the questions too.
For me it boils down to "should USMS follow FINA rules regarding suits for all courses, or should we make our own rules for SCY competition?" I'm not opposed to FINA reevaluating the suit rules, but I'm 100% opposed to USMS going rogue.
1312 respondents is quite impressive but I wonder what is the % of those who have actually competed in a pool meet in the last 2 years?
No, the email was received by 1312, opened by about 500 and 184 actually took the survey. It is probably a pretty fair bet that a pretty large fraction of the 300+ who didn't elected not to take the survey didn't have a strong opinion on the matter. The ones who didn't even open it may also not care, but there are other issues too (eg, away on vacation, overeager spam filter).
It is all in the report, but: almost half of the respondents self-identified as "regular competitors" and another 29% identified themselves as (essentially) "wannabes." The rate of disapproval of the suits remained about the same among all groups, though the rate of approval ticked up a little for the regular and wannabe competitors. (It still wasn't close.)
Any poll sent to a group on a matter that directly affects a small sub-set of that group is inherently flawed from the start.
Not to :dedhorse: but the 'techsuit issue' is actually a three-sided argument.
1 - No tech
2 - Textile only tech
3 - Non-textile tech
But a more than significant percentage of non-tech folks like to lump 2 and 3 together, while some pro-tech folks such as myself are dead-set against #3.
Inherently flawed from your viewpoint. I absolutely think that there should be an effort to find out if the competitors have a different view than the non-competitors; that's why we had a question to that effect in the VA survey. We were able to tease out the data by category.
But I am very strongly against the idea that only those who competed in a championship meet (LMSC, zone, national) have a voice worth listening to.
"Inherently flawed" in my view is only sending the poll to one group of people and say it is because you want to listen to "the views of the swimmers." I guess those who don't go to championship meets aren't real swimmers?
About your second point about textile vs non-textile suits: it may be an important distinction for some, but I don't think for most. The vast majority of the points made in the comments of the "disapprovers" were true whether or not the suits was textile: for example, for the "purists" it isn't the DEGREE of the enhancement, it is that it happens at all. Other people wanted consistency between courses, or between USMS and FINA.
It's like having a poll of only backstrokers being allowed to voice their opinion: shall we remove the 15m restriction on underwater SDKs off the start?
Let's do THAT poll!!!
FINA makes decisions for everyone. The decision makers certainly do not Participate (compete). The CASA makes decisions and do not participate. Most organizations are run by people who do not compete.
Non competitures are hasbeens sometimes.
You are right lots of decision makers, make bad decisions whether elected or not.
Apples and Tire Irons. Those folks are in positions (elected, appointed, whatever) where they are responsible for making decisions in the best interest of the group or organization they represent. Doesn't always happen that way.
