The Callout: March 12, 2012

The Calllout is a weekly editorial piece that highlights the “Good Calls” and the “Bad Calls” in swimming from the week prior.

Bad Call

Bad Call FINA, for making the Olympic Qualification procedures so complicated this year. I can understand the need to trim down the meet to a few less competitors, but what I don’t understand is why the B-standard wasn’t simply made faster in each event. For those of you who don’t know, instead of having an A-standard and a B-standard as in previous years, FINA has switched to a much more complicated system  Those who do not make the A-standard but do make the B-standard will be placed in a pool which will be capped at a certain number, something like NCAA Championships.  The meet will allow for a maximum of 900 entries. What makes it more complicated is the number of entries from Universality nations (those with no swimmers making the A or B cuts).  Then there’s a bunch of ranking based of of FINA points and a whole bunch of other complications.  The short of it is that many nations won’t know who is going to be on their Olympic teams until June 18th.  I will do my best to write up a full and simplified explanation of the process prior to Canadian Olympic Trials at the end of the month. For those of you who want more detail in the mean time, qualification regulations are available from FINA here.

Good Call

Good Call goes to Hilary Phelps for her volunteer efforts

My first Good Call of the week goes out to Hilary Phelps.  I can’t say enough good things about an older sister who takes the notoriety and fame introduced by her brother’s achievements and applies it, not to her own vanity and acknowledgement, but to a good cause.  Hilary has taken the time to volunteer with the US Army’s Wounded Warrior Program.  You can read about her contributions on her blog.  Good Call, Hilary, for taking what you’ve been given and making this world a better place.

My second Good Call is a little bit of a personal one honouring our launch.  I promise this will be the first and the last time I do this.  Good Call, Mel Stewart, for taking me up on my long standing offer to get together and put together a site.  Good Call, Tiffany Stewart, for getting him to call me and for taking care of all the practical aspects.  Good Call, Braden Keith, for taking so much time and energy to build such a dedicated base of followers and to entrust us with helping you continue that.  Good Call, Garrett McCaffrey for doing the same and for bringing so much experience here with you.  Good Call, Tim Binning for providing us with so many incredible photographs and Rob Aquatics for bringing us the open water scoop. To all of our sponsors who joined us right out of the gate, not knowing what they were going to get, you definitely made a Good Call. Good Call to everyone else who has supported us and made our launch incredibly successful.  I’m incredibly excited to have made this dream a reality.