With more and more people swimming in open water events, what is the best way to separate the heats: by gender? by speed? by age? by swimwear (wetsuit vs. non-wetsuit)? by swimmer's choice?
The need to maintain safety and segregate the swimmers into separate heats becomes more evident. But this raises many issues - none of which are easy to resolve.
If the heats are separated by speed, how do the race organizers best separate the swimmers? Is it by their best times in a pool event? If so, what pool event: the 400-meter free, the 800-meter free, the 1500-meter free? If it is by the open water races, is it by their performance in last year's event? At a different open water event? If so, what are the parameters of the open water qualification swim?
If the heats are separated by gender, and the women's heats go behind the men, is that fair to the elite women? If the heats are separated by age, what are the optimal age breaks?
An online poll at The Daily News of Open Water Swimming is showing some interesting poll results after the first few days.
I'm a 40+ woman, and while I wouldn't call myself "elite" I'm pretty fast compared to other women my age. In races with enough participants to justify wave starts, I much prefer time-seeded waves. For races of 1 mile or longer, seeding by recent 1650/1500 times seems to work well.
If the waves are divided by sex or age, then those who are among the fastest in the later waves run up on those who are among the slowest in the earlier waves, often pretty quickly. It's both a racing problem and a safety problem, IMO, when my chief competitors and I suddenly come upon and have to pass some guy doing a leisurely sidestroke, tacking his way toward the first buoy at half our speed or slower. The encounter probably isn't all that fun for sidestroke guy either.
I'm a 40+ woman, and while I wouldn't call myself "elite" I'm pretty fast compared to other women my age. In races with enough participants to justify wave starts, I much prefer time-seeded waves. For races of 1 mile or longer, seeding by recent 1650/1500 times seems to work well.
If the waves are divided by sex or age, then those who are among the fastest in the later waves run up on those who are among the slowest in the earlier waves, often pretty quickly. It's both a racing problem and a safety problem, IMO, when my chief competitors and I suddenly come upon and have to pass some guy doing a leisurely sidestroke, tacking his way toward the first buoy at half our speed or slower. The encounter probably isn't all that fun for sidestroke guy either.
