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.:)
Parents
Former Member
WWARD?
Who is John Galt?
I am not an expert on objectivism, but here is my take.
You have two groups, the sandbaggers and the competitors, both benefit from a new time, competitors benefit from increased competition, sandbaggers benefit from an unknown and create a cost of increased timeline and decreased competition.
The competitors will continue to compete as long as the benefit of the new time and the benefit of the competition is greater than the timeline cost, as long as there isn't an offer of better competition with the same or better timeline somewhere else.
The sandbaggers would regulate that sandbagging was legal while the competitors would let the desire to compete motivate accurate seed times.
Objectivism is anti-entitlement, anti-regulation, pro-capitalism, so it wouldn't match my purely selfish example.
WWARD?
Who is John Galt?
I am not an expert on objectivism, but here is my take.
You have two groups, the sandbaggers and the competitors, both benefit from a new time, competitors benefit from increased competition, sandbaggers benefit from an unknown and create a cost of increased timeline and decreased competition.
The competitors will continue to compete as long as the benefit of the new time and the benefit of the competition is greater than the timeline cost, as long as there isn't an offer of better competition with the same or better timeline somewhere else.
The sandbaggers would regulate that sandbagging was legal while the competitors would let the desire to compete motivate accurate seed times.
Objectivism is anti-entitlement, anti-regulation, pro-capitalism, so it wouldn't match my purely selfish example.
