Occasionally, I will miss a wall on my flip turn. It's never happened in a meet, but came up during my last meet when an official questioned me post race for barely touching a toe. During a freestyle event, is it within the rules to stop immediately and go back to touch a wall at the end of a length? Or, is the race over and might as well get out? For a short race, I'd just keep going. During a long event, I'd hate to do so, but would stop and go back so as not to risk it, if that's a possibility. Thanks.
dw45,
For freestyle and backstroke, the swimmer may return to the wall if they failed to touch with some part of the body. Of course, for backstroke, the swimmer must remain on their back during the "return" trip.
Due to the rules requiring two hand touches, butterfly and breaststroke are typically not a problem except when a swimmer attempts to touch with two hands and performs a somersault turn.
Paul
I think you have the duration of the next length of the pool to go back and rectify the miss. So in a 100 freestyle, if you miss the wall at the 25, you have until you touch the wall at the next turn (the 50) to turn around and go back to touch the wall. After you touch the wall at the 50, it is a DQ. Of course my knowledge of this is based off USA-S rules, so maybe masters has a different rule for this?
Point of clarification, in backstroke, you can return to the wall if have NOT left your back at any point. If you roll past vertical toward your *** and then miss the wall during your flip turn, you cannot return to the wall. See this on occasion where the swimmer will try to scull back to touch the wall with their toes - that's a DQ.
Point of clarification, in backstroke, you can return to the wall if have NOT left your back at any point. If you roll past vertical toward your *** and then miss the wall during your flip turn, you cannot return to the wall. See this on occasion where the swimmer will try to scull back to touch the wall with their toes - that's a DQ.
Right. There's actually a box to check for this very thing on the most current USA Swimming DQ slip I believe. I've made one of these calls and it wasn't overturned or even challenged AFAIK.
Worked as Deck Ref at an Age Group meet this past weekend and ironically we had a freestyle missed touch call. Don't see it much, maybe once a year or so.
