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.:)
And I'm still somewhat unclear on why sandbagging kills timelines in the non-distance events. I think split requests would be far worse offenders.
There was an early post in this thread that actually did timeline comparisons for meets seeded by a variety of methods, which gave some idea of the "sandbag effect."
Imagine two hypothetical meets. Meet A is perfectly seeded where the lanes finish exactly as expected: lane 4 wins every heat, lane 5 is second, and so on. This meet maximizes the amount of competition between participants, the amount of clear water (in the aggregate), and results in the shortest possible timeline (especially if mixed genders and age groups are used).
Meet B is randomly seeded: you might have 20-something speedsters like Paragon Jazz next to 80-year-old great-grandmothers. In terms of competition and timeline, this is a much worse scenario. It also results in less clear water in the aggregate, though obviously some people (the aforementioned paragon, for example) might be quite well off.
Neither meet will either happen, but the more accurately a person's seed times predict his/her actual performance, the more like situation A the meet will be. Sandbagging moves the situation closer to B.
MOST split requests are not of the type that I think you mean, where someone does the first part of the race fast and then goes easy. The vast majority are normal swims where someone realizes that the first part of the race was actually a pretty competitive swim, and the swimmer is unsure of swimming that shorter event in competition. So s/he will submit a split request. The only time it costs is that of the volunteers who have to process the request.
Actually I do sandbag, quite often. But that's very sweet of you.
Unfortunately, "Paragon of Swimming Virtue" doesn't quite fit in the character limit for user titles, so I had to abbreviate.
Does "sandbagging weasel" fit, then? Just wondering... :bolt:
Disclaimer: the above statement was meant as a joke. And there was no moral judgment intended by any part of this post. If you believe you detect a whiff of moral certitude, consider instead the possibility that it is time to do laundry. No puppies were harmed in the construction of this post.
And I'm still somewhat unclear on why sandbagging kills timelines in the non-distance events. I think split requests would be far worse offenders.
There was an early post in this thread that actually did timeline comparisons for meets seeded by a variety of methods, which gave some idea of the "sandbag effect."
Imagine two hypothetical meets. Meet A is perfectly seeded where the lanes finish exactly as expected: lane 4 wins every heat, lane 5 is second, and so on. This meet maximizes the amount of competition between participants, the amount of clear water (in the aggregate), and results in the shortest possible timeline (especially if mixed genders and age groups are used).
Meet B is randomly seeded: you might have 20-something speedsters like Paragon Jazz next to 80-year-old great-grandmothers. In terms of competition and timeline, this is a much worse scenario. It also results in less clear water in the aggregate, though obviously some people (the aforementioned paragon, for example) might be quite well off.
Neither meet will either happen, but the more accurately a person's seed times predict his/her actual performance, the more like situation A the meet will be. Sandbagging moves the situation closer to B.
MOST split requests are not of the type that I think you mean, where someone does the first part of the race fast and then goes easy. The vast majority are normal swims where someone realizes that the first part of the race was actually a pretty competitive swim, and the swimmer is unsure of swimming that shorter event in competition. So s/he will submit a split request. The only time it costs is that of the volunteers who have to process the request.
Actually I do sandbag, quite often. But that's very sweet of you.
Unfortunately, "Paragon of Swimming Virtue" doesn't quite fit in the character limit for user titles, so I had to abbreviate.
Does "sandbagging weasel" fit, then? Just wondering... :bolt:
Disclaimer: the above statement was meant as a joke. And there was no moral judgment intended by any part of this post. If you believe you detect a whiff of moral certitude, consider instead the possibility that it is time to do laundry. No puppies were harmed in the construction of this post.
