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 don't think I've made myself clear enough here: I posit that "sandbagging" is neither immoral or unethical or unsportsmanlike (or un-anything-else-you-high-horses-think-is-good) for the very precise reason* that none of us, not a single darn one of us (no matter how "right" we think we are and how "wrong" we think others are) truly knows how their performance will pan out and therefore how close their entry time will be to their final time. I enter my meets as soon as I know I can go to the meet, often weeks in advance. Even though I try to enter likely times, life happens either before the meet or during the meet and my result differs what whatever projected reality I had used to create the entry time.
Patrick,
maybe others have said that all sandbagging is bad, but I know that I have not. As you said, life happens but my issue and this is the last time I will get in a discussion about accurate seed times, is INTENTIONAL misrepresentation of expected performance. I don't give a hoot about someone who swam a 56 last month, seeds 56 and swims a 58 due to injury, illness or otherwise poor performance. That happens. The only real issue (IMHO) is intentional misrepresentation of expected performance. Doing repeat 100s in 1:00 in practice and then seeding 1:00 is, in my opinion, intentionally misrepresenting expected performance.
Also, for me, while it's an annoying practice at the local level, the meets are so small, the events have so few heats and range of times in each event are so great, that 'sandbagging' does not have a huge impact on the over all meet timeline (there are exceptions, mostly events that are already time constrained due to facility time), that I really don't care about it (except to tweak inviduals about it). But doing so at zone or national competitions is, again in my opinion which matters little unless I ever become a meet director of one of those events, unacceptable. In this competitions, one intentionally misrepresented seed time can skew the timeline of an entire event.
Please also note, I am railing against the INTENTIONAL mis-representation of expected performance (and this is also for the 'dreamers' out there who seed times unrealistically faster than they can expect to go, seeding 1s faster in a 100 might be ok, seeding 4s faster is unrealistic). I understand no sleep, got sick, didn't hear the whistle to step up :D, torn suit, pulled muscle, gout flare, too much mexican the night before, too much alchohol, too little alcohol, etc. etc..
Your right to do what you want is perfectly acceptable as long as it does not negatively impact others.
Slides soap box away.
For those that are in favor of intentional misrepresentation of seed times, go run a meet where you have a set time to complete the meet and see the true affect of sandbagging.
Or heck, watch the first several heats of any USA meet with all the NTs, THAT is what sandbagging does. But I put that one at the feet of USA swimming for requiring only provable times and establishing (but not really enforcing) stiff penalties for non-compliance.
I don't think I've made myself clear enough here: I posit that "sandbagging" is neither immoral or unethical or unsportsmanlike (or un-anything-else-you-high-horses-think-is-good) for the very precise reason* that none of us, not a single darn one of us (no matter how "right" we think we are and how "wrong" we think others are) truly knows how their performance will pan out and therefore how close their entry time will be to their final time. I enter my meets as soon as I know I can go to the meet, often weeks in advance. Even though I try to enter likely times, life happens either before the meet or during the meet and my result differs what whatever projected reality I had used to create the entry time.
Patrick,
maybe others have said that all sandbagging is bad, but I know that I have not. As you said, life happens but my issue and this is the last time I will get in a discussion about accurate seed times, is INTENTIONAL misrepresentation of expected performance. I don't give a hoot about someone who swam a 56 last month, seeds 56 and swims a 58 due to injury, illness or otherwise poor performance. That happens. The only real issue (IMHO) is intentional misrepresentation of expected performance. Doing repeat 100s in 1:00 in practice and then seeding 1:00 is, in my opinion, intentionally misrepresenting expected performance.
Also, for me, while it's an annoying practice at the local level, the meets are so small, the events have so few heats and range of times in each event are so great, that 'sandbagging' does not have a huge impact on the over all meet timeline (there are exceptions, mostly events that are already time constrained due to facility time), that I really don't care about it (except to tweak inviduals about it). But doing so at zone or national competitions is, again in my opinion which matters little unless I ever become a meet director of one of those events, unacceptable. In this competitions, one intentionally misrepresented seed time can skew the timeline of an entire event.
Please also note, I am railing against the INTENTIONAL mis-representation of expected performance (and this is also for the 'dreamers' out there who seed times unrealistically faster than they can expect to go, seeding 1s faster in a 100 might be ok, seeding 4s faster is unrealistic). I understand no sleep, got sick, didn't hear the whistle to step up :D, torn suit, pulled muscle, gout flare, too much mexican the night before, too much alchohol, too little alcohol, etc. etc..
Your right to do what you want is perfectly acceptable as long as it does not negatively impact others.
Slides soap box away.
For those that are in favor of intentional misrepresentation of seed times, go run a meet where you have a set time to complete the meet and see the true affect of sandbagging.
Or heck, watch the first several heats of any USA meet with all the NTs, THAT is what sandbagging does. But I put that one at the feet of USA swimming for requiring only provable times and establishing (but not really enforcing) stiff penalties for non-compliance.
