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.:)
Strangely, kids don't seem to care what seed time someone enters with.
To some extent, I would agree that kids don't care as much. However, as gull pointed out previously, prelims/final format somewhat eliminates this problem in all major meets. I think a swimmer is dodging the competition by intentionally putting down a slow time.
On the other hand, all high level USA-S meets have swimmers who are fast enough to cruise prelims and make finals. This is widely considered to be an acceptable practice. Occasionally, swimmers will win from outside lanes. They may have deprived another swimmer from "seeing" them easily in the pool by swimming slower in prelims, but I don't know anyone that has a problem with it. Sometimes energy conservation is the purpose, other times the reasoning is not so clear.
I don't think swimmers should intentionally put down slow times, but I don't think the meet management should change times either. When all is said and done, as a swimmer, I don't let any of this stuff get to me.
For the record, I generally hate sandbagging. I often swim the mile locally by myself at local meets as others have entered NT. Kirk's point of extending the meet is valid at least on a local level as the slow swimmers are then spread over 2 heats rather than just one. Not sure if it would have that kind of impact on a larger scale (or perhaps it would be worse).
Rotating fastest to slowest and slowest to fastest would seem fair as USMS consistently favors slower swimmers with more desirable times to swim (although I do love swimming the mile at 8 pm or later every year while everybody else is cozy in bed or eating dinner). Also, as a side benefit, fastest to slowest would obviate any desire to sandbag.
Are NTs allowed at nationals?
I really dislike sandbagging: it slows the meet for everyone, it is essentially dishonest, and it can disconcert others in the heat. But also I dislike it because I enjoy competition (esp at nationals), and if one of my potential competitors is in another heat or an outside lane, it lessens the experience somewhat.
But it is hard to enforce unless blatant. There are some pretty legitimate reasons for entering a time much slower than a previous effort: if injury or life cuts training time drastically, for example. I guess that's why the "discussion" part is in the rule.
so what does one do if entering a meet for the first time in say 17 years? A NT is not realistic but a "guess" is going to upset someone.
It shouldn't if it's a good guess. No one's going to be upset if you're a few seconds away from your seed time in either direction. You could always TT the event(s) at practice and use that as a seed time, too.
This is pretty harsh. I hardly think it's dishonest to put down a slow seed time to get to the airport or to ameliorate an inequity (best events back to back, fast women stuck in end lanes at mixed meet, etc.). Plus, people do perfectly legal split requests all the time which changes the race dynamics.
One may justify it by circumstances -- and the justification may even be a good one -- but if you enter a time that you KNOW will be much different than what you will actually do, then I think "dishonest" is absolutely accurate. And beyond the whole honesty thing, it is ultimately selfish, a "tragedy of the commons" type of situation: you are asking others to bear a portion of the cost of your personal gain (to leave early or whatever).
Split requests of the kind you describe -- where you go all-out for (say) the first half of the race and loaf the rest -- are a different animal, and they aren't all that common. I bet only a tiny fraction of sandbags describe this scenario.
so what does one do if entering a meet for the first time in say 17 years? A NT is not realistic but a "guess" is going to upset someone. I will either be a sandbagger or a glory days swimmer.
Matt, when faced with this problem I have used the best time I have achieved in practice in the past few months - basically Kirk's TT idea. It's honest, I really have swum that time recently, and it gets me into a heat where I don't look ridiculous. You might expect that since meet times are almost always faster than practice times, this would place you in a heat that is too slow and you will easily win the heat, but in my experience it does not work that way because there are always a few people who have a good swim and beat their seed time.
The meet is the same for every entrant. Every swimmer at every meet has circumstances they wish would be different, order of events, water temp, seeding, etc. A swimmer can skip a meet or alter their event choices. Asking your heat mates to alter theirs is poor sportsmanship.
I swam a 200 back during the 200 free recently. Despite hitting my seed time within :01 I notified the entire world of what I was doing and still felt like a tool for doing it.
Kurt:
I feel your pain.
Aside from the timing and a bad cow-tipping memory from Auburn, a big reason for me NOT to go to summer Nationals is that Auburn is a pain to get to ... pretty much for everyone except those who live there.
Be happy that at least Paul Smith seems to have gotten the hang of swimming distance events fastest to slowest at his local meets. Maybe the other 3 guys who run meets in Arizona (attention: Simon Percy, Mark Rankin and Jim Stites) will catch on.
I promise to try to start swimming longer events at local meets so you're not so lonely. :bighug:
On sandbagging and entry times in general:
I try to follow a sort of golden rule for entering meets: enter the time I think I'm capable of going given all the life and training factors leading up to the meet.
I don't like sandbaggers, but I also don't like rose-colored glasses optimists who swim way slower than their times, primarily for a reason Chris gave: I like competition.
With that said, I don't like the idea of a meet director discussing how to adjust my times. If this concept catches on, the people who will be most penalized will be those who race the most because they have the greatest volume of data from which a random meet director can 'estimate' their 'proper' entry time.
Be happy that at least Paul Smith seems to have gotten the hang of swimming distance events fastest to slowest at his local meets. Maybe the other 3 guys who run meets in Arizona (attention: Simon Percy, Mark Rankin and Jim Stites) will catch on.
The local meets are where I'd love to see the occasional fast to slow seeding. Distance events are almost always the last event and it definitely affects my desire to swim if I know I'm going to be in the very last heat of the day.
At Nationals slow to fast more often than not helps me. For example in Mesa I was able to fly in Thursday morning knowing I wouldn't be swimming the 1650 until sometimes in the afternoon. Distance events don't typically end the days at Nationals, so I don't think it's as much of an issue--IMO, of course.
so what does one do if entering a meet for the first time in say 17 years? A NT is not realistic but a "guess" is going to upset someone. I will either be a sandbagger or a glory days swimmer.
