The anti-sandbag law:
"if a swimmer enters an event with a time significantly slower or faster than that swimmer's recorded time in the past two years, the meet director may, after a discussion with the swimmer, change the seeded time to a realistic time" (104.5.5.A(10)).
Concerning my Auburn nationals entry, I confess, when faced with a 7 hour 2 stop flight and 3:45 nonstop at an earlier time, I did what any warm-blooded middle-aged American swimmer with low self-esteem would do--sandbag my entry so I could catch the earlier flight, thus diminishing the possible time spent sitting next to a 400 pound Alabama slammer with sleep apnea wearing nothing but overalls and body odor. Of course, I was caught in my bold fabrication and my time was "fixed."
USMS seems to have an identity problem. Are we hard core with rigid qualifying times? It would seem not as 2 of my not-so-speedy family members were allowed to swim four events last year in Puerto Rico. If we are not hard core, why does anybody care that I sandbag? More to the point, why can one person enter a crappy time and another cannot? Just wondering.:)
This is pretty harsh. I hardly think it's dishonest to put down a slow seed time to get to the airport or to ameliorate an inequity (best events back to back, fast women stuck in end lanes at mixed meet, etc.). Plus, people do perfectly legal split requests all the time which changes the race dynamics.
One may justify it by circumstances -- and the justification may even be a good one -- but if you enter a time that you KNOW will be much different than what you will actually do, then I think "dishonest" is absolutely accurate. And beyond the whole honesty thing, it is ultimately selfish, a "tragedy of the commons" type of situation: you are asking others to bear a portion of the cost of your personal gain (to leave early or whatever).
Split requests of the kind you describe -- where you go all-out for (say) the first half of the race and loaf the rest -- are a different animal, and they aren't all that common. I bet only a tiny fraction of sandbags describe this scenario.
This is pretty harsh. I hardly think it's dishonest to put down a slow seed time to get to the airport or to ameliorate an inequity (best events back to back, fast women stuck in end lanes at mixed meet, etc.). Plus, people do perfectly legal split requests all the time which changes the race dynamics.
One may justify it by circumstances -- and the justification may even be a good one -- but if you enter a time that you KNOW will be much different than what you will actually do, then I think "dishonest" is absolutely accurate. And beyond the whole honesty thing, it is ultimately selfish, a "tragedy of the commons" type of situation: you are asking others to bear a portion of the cost of your personal gain (to leave early or whatever).
Split requests of the kind you describe -- where you go all-out for (say) the first half of the race and loaf the rest -- are a different animal, and they aren't all that common. I bet only a tiny fraction of sandbags describe this scenario.
