I am writing a story for Swimmer magazine on where USMS records are likely to be 50 years from now and would truly appreciate your help in predicting these!
There are a total of 1800+ individual pool records possible, so to narrow things down, I'm concentrating on two events in two age groups: the 100 yards free and the 400 yard IM in age groups 45-49 and 65-69.
The current records here are pretty amazing, and the curves showing the trajectories since USMS began 50 years ago suggest there is likely plenty of room to drop.
If you could send me your email address to jamesthornton1@comcast.net , I will send you my little prediction form plus graphs of the record trends. Thanks in advance.
Alternatively, you could just post your predictions here. In any event, I need to have my story in by the 15th, so please act with some alacrity! Again, thanks so much in advance.
PS if you could include any rationale behind your predictions (mathematical analysis, guess work, gut feeling, whatever) that would be fantastic!
Note: current records and record holders are in red below.
Name: _______________________
Your predictions for records by 2070:
Men 100 Free
Now:45-49 (N. Grainger: 46.21) 65-69 (R. Abrahams: 49.42)
By 2070 _________________ _________________
Women 100 Free
Now: 45-49 (E. Braun: 51.99) 65-69 (L. Val: 57.88)
By 2070: _______________ _________________
Men 400 IM
Now:45-49 (N. Grainger: 4:01.32) 65-69 (R. Colella: 4:30.64)
By 2070: ___________ _____________________
Women 400 IM
Now: 45-49 (K. Pipes-Nielsen: 4:32.87) 5-69 (L. Val: 5:21.70)
By 2070: ___________ __________________
Rationale for your choices:
I would have to agree. What is so sad is that there doesn't seem to be any alternative online forum that USMS is investing in. Yeah, they do the odd post to Instagram, but even that has little regularity to it and that is not a platform for conversation. And, there's no real discussion or engagement on Facebook from USMS.
USMS had THE global lead with these forums as a place for adult swimmers to talk about swimming and they've squandered it. I'm sure they will see a membership drop due to the pandemic, but I'm sure the USMS leadership's decision to not invest in the key virtual community they already had will exacerbate this drop.
Sorry to hijack this thread, but the Forums are important. I emailed USMS and got a reply that the new"platform" will hopefully be up by the end of the year. I expect they are doing the best they can, but it surely would be nice to have an easily accessed, vibrant discussion arena to keep our swimming interest alive in the absence of meets and, in many areas, even pools.
Sorry to hijack this thread, but the Forums are important. I emailed USMS and got a reply that the new"platform" will hopefully be up by the end of the year. I expect they are doing the best they can, but it surely would be nice to have an easily accessed, vibrant discussion arena to keep our swimming interest alive in the absence of meets and, in many areas, even pools.
Absolutely! We need it now more than ever. This is the only social media I engage in except for (very) occasional communications with my team on Facebook, and it has been a tremendous help for me over the ten years I have been a USMS member. In my opinion, this would be the optimal time for USMS to be encouraging its members to interact on the Forums!
Thanks to all of you who have been my virtual coaches over the years-- especially you, King Frog! :agree:
Bugs me too. It seems so simple (from my understanding of website platforms) to just add a link at the top directing people to the forums. And since it seems so easy but USMS hasn't done it, I have to believe it's because they choose not to do it, which goes to show they really don't give a damn about these forums anymore.I would have to agree. What is so sad is that there doesn't seem to be any alternative online forum that USMS is investing in. Yeah, they do the odd post to Instagram, but even that has little regularity to it and that is not a platform for conversation. And, there's no real discussion or engagement on Facebook from USMS.
USMS had THE global lead with these forums as a place for adult swimmers to talk about swimming and they've squandered it. I'm sure they will see a membership drop due to the pandemic, but I'm sure the USMS leadership's decision to not invest in the key virtual community they already had will exacerbate this drop.
I would have to agree. What is so sad is that there doesn't seem to be any alternative online forum that USMS is investing in. Yeah, they do the odd post to Instagram, but even that has little regularity to it and that is not a platform for conversation. And, there's no real discussion or engagement on Facebook from USMS.
USMS had THE global lead with these forums as a place for adult swimmers to talk about swimming and they've squandered it. I'm sure they will see a membership drop due to the pandemic, but I'm sure the USMS leadership's decision to not invest in the key virtual community they already had will exacerbate this drop.
Yeah, it's unfortunate. There are some big adult swimming groups on FB, but I really want to chat with other adult swimmers on technique and training and stuff and the ones I've seen/am a member of aren't big on that.
They may be preparing some new platform for the end of the year, but with the way they roll out things related to these forums, what I suspect is that we will only know the forums have moved to a new platform when we all log in (or are unable to log in!) and get some sort of “501 Gateway Error†and then we all wonder what happened (by ourselves cause we have no where to meet and discuss “what happened to the forums?â€), and three weeks later a press release shows up on SwimSwam and SwimmingWorld about a new forum platform that has been up and running for four weeks.
Iâ€ve predicted (down to the order of teams scoring) the last two Champions League soccer game scores. My skills as a clairvoyant are only rivaled by my skills in the pool ;)
It has taken me awhile to really think about the question and my definitive answer is that it is totally unpredictable. Look at 50 years ago and what has happened since. In 1976 Sports Illustrated had their usual Olympic prediction article. They noticed that the record progression for the 1500 M free was nearly linear and made their time prediction. I laughed because I knew the 1500 WR at the time was way under their prediction. I knew about one of, if not the, greatest, invention in competitive swimmng history,goggles, had made ultra-long workouts feasable. Suddenly distance swimmers in the US and Australia were going 20,000M/day.Since then we have had State sanctioned doping, UDK, ultrafast pools, breaststroke rules rewritten majorly once and minorly more times, shiny tech suits, fabric suits that are almost as fast as the shiny suits, EVF(remember the S pull) fins on starting blocks,wedges for backstroke,etc. etc. The next breakthrough is unpredictable, because if we could predict it someone would be doing it now.
ve predicted (down to the order of teams scoring) the last two Champions League soccer game scores. My skills as a clairvoyant are only rivaled by my skills in the pool ;)
