After the inclusion of mixed relay at both the FINA World Championships and Olympics, USA Swimming has decided to begin recognizing National Age Group Records in the events as well.
According to the latest edition of the USA Swimming Board of Director meeting minutes, the organization will officially recognize Mixed Relay National Age Group Records in September, which is effectively the beginning of the short course yards season in the United States.
FINA announced that they would begin recognizing World Records in mixed relays in September of 2013. That resulted in a dash to be the first to recognize new record-breaking swims. Indiana University was the first to the wall, hosting a special meet with the goal of breaking the World Records, and FINA recognized their swims in 8 new relays.
USA Swimming has not yet laid out whether there will be benchmark times for those new records, or which relays specifically will be recognized.
Ughhhhh stop this trend. More events just for the sake of more events makes no sense. Still can’t believe Simone Manuel can win 5 medals in a single world champs (or 4 in the olympics) by only swimming the 100 free. This will make our sport look like a joke to the broader athletic community, and further overvalue relay swimmers in terms of medal totals and scoring. Nevermind that the inherent math favors women for free/fly and men for back/br, so generally this means female freestylers have more relay opportunities than male ones and so forth. Obviously there are exceptions, but I like that as of now the balance between fly/back/br is exactly perfectly weighted in swimming. Don’t rock that… Read more »
This is my worry
Relays? What are these relays you speak of? In the LSC our club competes in the only time kids swim relays is at Championship meets. Meet schedules and events are so crowded and the 4 hour time limit, relays are the first thing gone.
You must swim in the Gulf.
That was my first thought as well. Often even in non championship meets where relays are offered my team skips entering them. Parents and swimmers who are on deck for hours volunteering or racing usually would prefer finishing earlier. Entry fees are expensive as well.
USMS already keeps mixed relay records 🙂
mixed relays have been around a few years now and I still have zero interest in them, just inflates medal totals/ record swims
Sure. Almost 2 golds given to someone like Dressel at worlds with the added mixed free and medley relays. And then some ignorant people will compare his total of golds to Michael Phelps’ 2007 worlds for example….
Useless event. Hopefully they will never make the same mistake for the relays on track.
Useless events!
I bet there will be some tense competition.
my relay just has to be the first ones to swim it and we get a NAG
Alternativamente tiene problemas.
They should recognize Regan Smith’s WJR even though she still has it anyways
Agreed!!
They need to recognize every world junior record set.
For example, half of Katie Ledecky’s world records, Ian Thorpe’s 200 and 400 free. Phelps’ 400 im. Many others who deserve to have their name on the list are not on the list because they are “too fast”. It’s completely ridiculous.