I organized a swim recently and we had non-wetsuit and wetsuit categories. I'm fine with accommodating wetsuits for open water swimming. However, the challenge comes up in the awards portion. Should wetsuit swimmers be entitled to the exact same type of awards as non-wetsuit swimmers? The problem this poses as an organizer is that suddenly you need to purchase twice the number of awards to accommodate a separate division (wetsuit), even though everyone's swimming the same race.
What might be fair for next time (learning as I go) is to award the top 3 male/female non-wetsuit swimmers for each event, but just the #1 male and female in the wetsuit category for each event. They at least get acknowledged for their efforts.
Curious if anyone else has thoughts on this.
Parents
Former Member
I don't really care for OW swimming that much, but those NYC OW rules for swim suits are just ridiculous!!
many of the people who work the events are volunteers. it would be unreasonable to have everyone familiar with the different models of tech suits (yes they were also produced as jammers), but easy enough to differentiate between a brief and a jammer. blame it on the suit manufacturers not the event organizers who are trying to maintain a (sea) level playing field.
I don't really care for OW swimming that much, but those NYC OW rules for swim suits are just ridiculous!!
many of the people who work the events are volunteers. it would be unreasonable to have everyone familiar with the different models of tech suits (yes they were also produced as jammers), but easy enough to differentiate between a brief and a jammer. blame it on the suit manufacturers not the event organizers who are trying to maintain a (sea) level playing field.
