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.:)
have wondered whether the most selfish people are those that enter the maximum number of events at every meet.
The least-selfish swimmers don't enter meets at all. In fact, extending this reasoning to its logical conclusion, the most saintly swimmers don't actually train in the pool, so they don't take up any pool space even in practice.
So I nominate Jazz as the paragon of swimming virtue: he hardly trains in the pool (usually on his own), doesn't sandbag from what I can recall, and enters only a few of the shortest events on those infrequent occasions that he does feel the urge to compete. Barely a ripple on the timeline.
At the other end of the spectrum we have people like Laurie Hug and Thomas Patterson: they train like crazy, swim the maximum number of events -- often nothing under 200 -- and generally make everyone else feel like complete slackers. And they do it with a smile, too. We should vote those bozos off the island.
have wondered whether the most selfish people are those that enter the maximum number of events at every meet.
The least-selfish swimmers don't enter meets at all. In fact, extending this reasoning to its logical conclusion, the most saintly swimmers don't actually train in the pool, so they don't take up any pool space even in practice.
So I nominate Jazz as the paragon of swimming virtue: he hardly trains in the pool (usually on his own), doesn't sandbag from what I can recall, and enters only a few of the shortest events on those infrequent occasions that he does feel the urge to compete. Barely a ripple on the timeline.
At the other end of the spectrum we have people like Laurie Hug and Thomas Patterson: they train like crazy, swim the maximum number of events -- often nothing under 200 -- and generally make everyone else feel like complete slackers. And they do it with a smile, too. We should vote those bozos off the island.
