olympic trials qual times

[2.tso]

just out of interest thought we could compare the olympic trials entry times, i dont know if the gb ones are out yet.

here are the usa times
http://www.usaswimming.org/USASWeb/_Rainbow/Documents/c076aa53-1ba8-412d-aa18-366abc9cf785/08TrialsCuts.pdf

[2.tso]

Australia

http://www.swimming.org.au/upload/sitedata/swimming%20australia/national/meet/data/2008%20telstra%20olympic%20team%20swimming%20trial s/aus%202008%20open%20lc%20qt's.pdf

[Bazza]

GB

http://www.sportcentric.com/vmgmt/vfilemgmt/page/filedownload/1,8202,5157-51138-127230-0-file,00.pdf

[Bazza]

I'll get things started - I looked at the 100m breast as that is my best event (in theory).

US QT = 64.69 (59 qualifiers according to their rankings)
AUS QT = 69.70 (26 swimmers did the time at nationals last Dec)
GB QT = 65.77 (32 qualifiers from rankings)

I know I'm only looking at one event, but what's interesting about the USA is they seem to be more inclusive or myabe it's that from their rankings they seem to have a far higher number of swimmers in their 20s at that level. GB has proportionately more swimmers under 20, we're obviously not doing as good a job of keeping people in the sport.

EDIT: Thinking some more - is it because they are more inclusive both in terms of who can enter the meet and also how many people get a second swim? For example USA could have 50 swimmers in the 100 breast and half of them will get a second swim because of C finals. We could have 30 swimmers, of which 20 could do semis and 10 the final. This means the top swimmers doing 3 rounds almost for the sake of as they should be able to qualify easily, but not many other swimmers get more than one shot.

[selkie]

A lot of that's the university system here. Swim the first four years of college, and you're finishing your college elgibility at about age 22. It's common for some students to need an extra year to finish up an undergrad degree if you took a while to decide on a major, or are in education and need to do your student teaching. Or maybe you're planning on moving on to grad school right after undergrad.

So why not stay in the pool for another year or two while you're finishing up academic requirements? Even if you can't swim for your school anymore, you can still go to USA swimming meets. And you never know, something might click, and you end up getting to represent your country internationally.

Though in terms of qualifying standards, I think the reason USA swimming sets them where they do is that every Olympic cycle, there's going to be a young teenager or two who seems to come out of nowhere and go on to good things at the Olympics. They want to set the standards low enough that they can catch that rising star who was rather ordinary a year before the big show, but looks to be peaking at just the right time.

[Gina]

I think the idea in the UK for all but the best is to give up when they get to uni. I think more money is needed at University level so swimmers can carry on training whilst at uni. That is the time they will be swimming even faster but a lot miss out on it.