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.:)
I guess each time we swim a lot faster or slower than our entry time, we should apologize to the people around us for potientially f-ing up their race
Sorry but that's a straw man. The issue isn't poor or great performance, the issue is DELIBERATE slow seeding before hand. If you blow out a shoulder and don't finish, that's one thing but if you are ripping off 2:00 repeats for 200 free in practice and seed at 2:05 that is completely different.
So please, stick to the base issue here of INTENTIONALLY putting an unrealistic seed time. I don't care about the folks who put an honest time and either have the swim of thier life or have something happen that adversely affects thier performance. That can not be controlled. But what CAN be controlled is once again the DELIBERATE mis-representation of a swimmer's realistic time.
My first meet in 2008, I seeded very poorly, not intentionally but because it was my first meet in 20 years with a whole month back in the pool. And I was embarrased a bit as I swam considerably faster than my seed times. But I didn't want to NT as that would have been much worse. Those things happen but the fact is that deliberately entering a seed time will affect the meet experience of a minimum of one swimmer (not including the sandbagger) and potentially much more than that.
I guess each time we swim a lot faster or slower than our entry time, we should apologize to the people around us for potientially f-ing up their race
Sorry but that's a straw man. The issue isn't poor or great performance, the issue is DELIBERATE slow seeding before hand. If you blow out a shoulder and don't finish, that's one thing but if you are ripping off 2:00 repeats for 200 free in practice and seed at 2:05 that is completely different.
So please, stick to the base issue here of INTENTIONALLY putting an unrealistic seed time. I don't care about the folks who put an honest time and either have the swim of thier life or have something happen that adversely affects thier performance. That can not be controlled. But what CAN be controlled is once again the DELIBERATE mis-representation of a swimmer's realistic time.
My first meet in 2008, I seeded very poorly, not intentionally but because it was my first meet in 20 years with a whole month back in the pool. And I was embarrased a bit as I swam considerably faster than my seed times. But I didn't want to NT as that would have been much worse. Those things happen but the fact is that deliberately entering a seed time will affect the meet experience of a minimum of one swimmer (not including the sandbagger) and potentially much more than that.
