World Masters Championships - Riccione ITALY

[manic porpoise]

Originally Posted by Limerick

Speaking of fly, did you see the 1st heat of the 200m fly?
Some poor old man took almost a quarter of an hour to finish the race!

Ouch. At least he made it. Quite a few seemed to just stop which isn't very good at a World event.

[Limerick]

Originally Posted by manic porpoise

Ouch. At least he made it. Quite a few seemed to just stop which isn't very good at a World event.

there was another strange 200m fly race, in the 60 - 65 age group as far as I recall, the guy who won his heat, he took the race as 4 x 50m, stopped at the edn of each length, had an 8 secs rest, got a really strong push off the wall and powered away down the pool to repeat the same process at the other end!

[adamlelean]

Originally Posted by manic porpoise

I achieved three pizzas and four ice creams but I lost count on bowls of pasta. I had to stay for a couple of extra days after the meet to increase my ice cream count. How did everyone else do?

The swimming part went amazingly well for me. I don't really know what happened to cause it but I suspect I just got a number of little things right this time. I think it counts as my most successful masters meet ever. 100 fly, 200 fly and 400 IM all were far quicker than I was expecting. The last time I went quicker on the 100 fly and 400 IM was in 2007 and the last time I went faster on the 200 fly was in 2004 (although I have been within a few 100ths in 2005 and 2007).

I think I beat you on the ice cream count.

100 & 200 free were slower than I wanted, although 200 was faster than my entry time.
400 was my best jammers only time, and 800 was 9 seconds faster than I entered.

I believe there is a current, which is faster in deep water, but my open water swim was faster than a straight 3K with the tide at Southend , so I suspect their metres were a little shorter than normal metres.

[awaldram]

Originally Posted by Swim-ma

It would certainly seem that many swimmers went for the experience & to 'get the t-shirt' so to speak. I know someone who did just this with made up entry times, just so he could say he has swum for GB!
Suppose the only way to legitimise the entry standard is to have some way of verifying each swim but not sure if this is feasible with so many swimming associations involved.
It does seem ridiculous that some events were so long. I hope the officials were working in shifts!

From an outsiders view point Masters swimming has worked long and hard to be unregulated and outside the direct control of any organization.

The result is its a law unto itself with no control of truthful entries.
Worse an acceptance that unsporting behavior is the standard.

How many competitors enter times they either have never achieved or last achieved decades ago.?

Must make a mockery of the heats.!

[awaldram]

Originally Posted by Limerick

hi MP
Yes, I got a fine warm up, I dont think thats the problem (altho, as you know, the mens fly events ran very late so there was a time gap between doing the warm up and racing).

Sounds like you may have the same issue my son has , as I call it dog seen the rabbit syndrome.

i.e in the excitement you push a bit too hard on the opening 50's leading to much slower back ends.

[Odmaster]

Originally Posted by awaldram

From an outsiders view point Masters swimming has worked long and hard to be unregulated and outside the direct control of any organization.

The result is its a law unto itself with no control of truthful entries.
Worse an acceptance that unsporting behavior is the standard.

How many competitors enter times they either have never achieved or last achieved decades ago.?

Must make a mockery of the heats.!

Thing is, there ARE Masters meets where you DO have to prove where you did the qualifying time, e.g. the Norwegian Open, so it shouldn't be TOO hard for FINA to adopt that stance. Yes, it'd be a lot of work to check it but that's what they get paid for, surely????

[adamlelean]

Originally Posted by awaldram

From an outsiders view point Masters swimming has worked long and hard to be unregulated and outside the direct control of any organization.

The result is its a law unto itself with no control of truthful entries.
Worse an acceptance that unsporting behavior is the standard.

How many competitors enter times they either have never achieved or last achieved decades ago.?

Must make a mockery of the heats.!

The European masters has qualifying times that you need to get approved by your national governing body. I believe the same thing happens for some US meets, therefore it wouldn't be too hard to get most national governing bodies to validate times.

Making withdrawals easier would probably also help. I wouldn't suggest what happened in the 800 ( secondary re-entry during the event, if you weren't there when they called your name you didn't swim, but for some it was difficult to guess when their name would be called).

In my age group, certainly for some events, over 25% of the swimmers were either DNS or
NT. Assuming this was similar for other events/age groups, the swimming time could be cut down by a quarter.

[Verity]

Originally Posted by manic porpoise

I achieved three pizzas and four ice creams but I lost count on bowls of pasta. I had to stay for a couple of extra days after the meet to increase my ice cream count. How did everyone else do?

The swimming part went amazingly well for me. I don't really know what happened to cause it but I suspect I just got a number of little things right this time. I think it counts as my most successful masters meet ever. 100 fly, 200 fly and 400 IM all were far quicker than I was expecting. The last time I went quicker on the 100 fly and 400 IM was in 2007 and the last time I went faster on the 200 fly was in 2004 (although I have been within a few 100ths in 2005 and 2007).

Shed loads of ice cream MP, Sumo and mine's official Riccione pudding, (or dessert course if you're posh) (and as you well know having had dinner with us on the Friday!

Oh and by the way we are still not worthy oh conqueror of Claudia Poll and other very tall swimmers!

V

[manic porpoise]

Originally Posted by Verity

Shed loads of ice cream MP, Sumo and mine's official Riccione pudding, (or dessert course if you're posh) (and as you well know having had dinner with us on the Friday!

Oh and by the way we are still not worthy oh conqueror of Claudia Poll and other very tall swimmers!

V

Posh - oh yes, that's me. However, we had ice cream as a mid afternoon snack between our pizza lunch and pasta dinner (or pasta lunch and pizza dinner). I'm thinking about making it a habit.