Hardly....
and I’ll say it again: this isn’t about safety, its about liability.
One would think with 58,000 members, USMS would have the leverage to shop around for insurance. I don’t know who came up with the prop guard requirement, but I can tell you it certainly wasn’t anyone who has ever operated a safety boat for an OW event.
I believe that it was an insurance requirement if I remember our last LMSC meeting correctly (our chair was a member of the OW task force, but possibly I am mis-remembering). I think they did shop around and this was the best they could do. I'm sure that USMS would welcome input from race directors, but maybe insuring 150 events across the nation is a more complicated thing than insuring one event or event series.
Of course it is about liability, but that isn't as completely divorced from safety as you claim. You don't have a lawsuit without an incident.
Not that unique: Among my personal swimming acquaintances, more do not swim with a team and have never participated in a pool meet than do. They join for one or two OW swims, have never read the forums (so wouldn't respond to a poll), don't have a flog....
While it is hard to argue with "personal acquaintances" for accuracy, I did try to get a measure of pool/OW event participation rates from our LMSC of about 1100 members in the year 2012. More details are here, but to summarize: almost 40% (38.8%) of our membership participated in either an OW or pool event, with almost 12% participating solely in OW event(s) and 24% solely in pool event(s). The numbers do not add up to the total since some members participated in both types of events.
I can't say how representative our LMSC is of others, some of which may be far more OW-oriented than ours. And possibly the numbers are biased negatively for OW participation because of the 13 events considered, only 4 were OW events (partly b/c we sanction fewer OW events than pool events and partly because OW event results are usually in a format that makes them more difficult to tie into our registration database).
From the perspective of a rather disinterested (possibly less informed but also unbiased) observer, I think that USMS has demonstrated a pretty strong commitment to OW events. Heck, it seemed to me that the last SWIMMER magazine had almost nothing BUT items dedicated to OW. I can understand the frustration and anger of OW event directors and participants but I think that USMS just got caught in a bind this year. Hopefully in a couple years it will all be behind us.
Hardly....
and I’ll say it again: this isn’t about safety, its about liability.
One would think with 58,000 members, USMS would have the leverage to shop around for insurance. I don’t know who came up with the prop guard requirement, but I can tell you it certainly wasn’t anyone who has ever operated a safety boat for an OW event.
I believe that it was an insurance requirement if I remember our last LMSC meeting correctly (our chair was a member of the OW task force, but possibly I am mis-remembering). I think they did shop around and this was the best they could do. I'm sure that USMS would welcome input from race directors, but maybe insuring 150 events across the nation is a more complicated thing than insuring one event or event series.
Of course it is about liability, but that isn't as completely divorced from safety as you claim. You don't have a lawsuit without an incident.
Not that unique: Among my personal swimming acquaintances, more do not swim with a team and have never participated in a pool meet than do. They join for one or two OW swims, have never read the forums (so wouldn't respond to a poll), don't have a flog....
While it is hard to argue with "personal acquaintances" for accuracy, I did try to get a measure of pool/OW event participation rates from our LMSC of about 1100 members in the year 2012. More details are here, but to summarize: almost 40% (38.8%) of our membership participated in either an OW or pool event, with almost 12% participating solely in OW event(s) and 24% solely in pool event(s). The numbers do not add up to the total since some members participated in both types of events.
I can't say how representative our LMSC is of others, some of which may be far more OW-oriented than ours. And possibly the numbers are biased negatively for OW participation because of the 13 events considered, only 4 were OW events (partly b/c we sanction fewer OW events than pool events and partly because OW event results are usually in a format that makes them more difficult to tie into our registration database).
From the perspective of a rather disinterested (possibly less informed but also unbiased) observer, I think that USMS has demonstrated a pretty strong commitment to OW events. Heck, it seemed to me that the last SWIMMER magazine had almost nothing BUT items dedicated to OW. I can understand the frustration and anger of OW event directors and participants but I think that USMS just got caught in a bind this year. Hopefully in a couple years it will all be behind us.
