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.:)
A funny thing happens to me when I go to mid-season meets and race agains the kids. I don't know if this is a rule or common practice, but the kids always seem to be entered in their absolute best times from SWIMS regardless of what meet they're swimming in. Early season and mid-season, these guys are all over the map in their performance relative to their entry times.
Around here, at least, the times aren't under the control of the kids. They just indicate which events they are interested in (choices that can be overridden by the coach) and the club enters all of them at once.
I recently "entered" a USA-S meet in this fashion, and the system automatically filled in my best SWIMS times (from taper meets). I couldn't change these times, unfortunately; I'm sure I'll be much, much slower than them.
I remember (not necessarily fondly) my parents making me fill in the entry cards for meets, one for each event. It took forever. While I wish I could have changed my entry times, entering meets certainly is faster nowadays.
Like second hand smoke, seriously? Second hand smoke causes cancer and is a disaster for asthmatics. I'm sure you can think of a more apt analogy. For example, I just drove down a neighborhood street at 28 mph instead of 25 mph.
Sandbagging doesn't really effect you -- you have the luxury of virtually always swimming in a center lane. So why does it aggravate you so much? Bobby Patten just entered with slow times at Nats b/c he didn't expect to go so fast -- an honest mistake, right?
Your replacement analogy is interesting. I can argue that both things (second-hand smoke and speeding) have very similar effects: a small increased risk of death or injury/disease. You clearly find one (+3 mph speeding) pretty insignificant compared to the other; I can find plenty of self-appointed mom "traffic cops" in my neighborhood that would disagree with you. (Those people scare me. Seriously.)
Obviously sandbagging doesn't cause cancer. But what you find insignificant, others do not. Every nationals I have attended has had at least one event affected by sandbagging. Did Bobby (whom I consider a friend) sandbag? You'd have to ask him, but I notice that if he had entered his fastest time from the previous year, we could have had a nice, non-virtual race: he would have been two lanes over from me instead of in another heat. Along those lines, I almost never swim in a lane anywhere near Jeff Erwin in the 500 because he always enters slow. Just two examples, there are others.
Does this keep me awake at nights gnashing my teeth? Of course not. But this is a thread about sandbagging so I'm declaring my distaste for it.
Strangely, kids don't seem to care what seed time someone enters with. Is it a learned trait with age to worry about something this insignificant? The only times I've ever heard anyone complain about someone else's seed times, it was either a masters swimmer, a disgruntled coach, or a uptight age group parent (and this was pretty rare), but never a competitor 8-18, nor collegiate for that matter.... that's just an observation :)
Good point. Now I have to rethink my stance on fart jokes and Justin Bieber to better reflect teen sensibilities.
A funny thing happens to me when I go to mid-season meets and race agains the kids. I don't know if this is a rule or common practice, but the kids always seem to be entered in their absolute best times from SWIMS regardless of what meet they're swimming in. Early season and mid-season, these guys are all over the map in their performance relative to their entry times.
Around here, at least, the times aren't under the control of the kids. They just indicate which events they are interested in (choices that can be overridden by the coach) and the club enters all of them at once.
I recently "entered" a USA-S meet in this fashion, and the system automatically filled in my best SWIMS times (from taper meets). I couldn't change these times, unfortunately; I'm sure I'll be much, much slower than them.
I remember (not necessarily fondly) my parents making me fill in the entry cards for meets, one for each event. It took forever. While I wish I could have changed my entry times, entering meets certainly is faster nowadays.
Like second hand smoke, seriously? Second hand smoke causes cancer and is a disaster for asthmatics. I'm sure you can think of a more apt analogy. For example, I just drove down a neighborhood street at 28 mph instead of 25 mph.
Sandbagging doesn't really effect you -- you have the luxury of virtually always swimming in a center lane. So why does it aggravate you so much? Bobby Patten just entered with slow times at Nats b/c he didn't expect to go so fast -- an honest mistake, right?
Your replacement analogy is interesting. I can argue that both things (second-hand smoke and speeding) have very similar effects: a small increased risk of death or injury/disease. You clearly find one (+3 mph speeding) pretty insignificant compared to the other; I can find plenty of self-appointed mom "traffic cops" in my neighborhood that would disagree with you. (Those people scare me. Seriously.)
Obviously sandbagging doesn't cause cancer. But what you find insignificant, others do not. Every nationals I have attended has had at least one event affected by sandbagging. Did Bobby (whom I consider a friend) sandbag? You'd have to ask him, but I notice that if he had entered his fastest time from the previous year, we could have had a nice, non-virtual race: he would have been two lanes over from me instead of in another heat. Along those lines, I almost never swim in a lane anywhere near Jeff Erwin in the 500 because he always enters slow. Just two examples, there are others.
Does this keep me awake at nights gnashing my teeth? Of course not. But this is a thread about sandbagging so I'm declaring my distaste for it.
Strangely, kids don't seem to care what seed time someone enters with. Is it a learned trait with age to worry about something this insignificant? The only times I've ever heard anyone complain about someone else's seed times, it was either a masters swimmer, a disgruntled coach, or a uptight age group parent (and this was pretty rare), but never a competitor 8-18, nor collegiate for that matter.... that's just an observation :)
Good point. Now I have to rethink my stance on fart jokes and Justin Bieber to better reflect teen sensibilities.
