Poolside Chat: parents of competitive swimmers

[2ducksandI]

Seems I managed to fill the other thread with talk of taking fridges to away galas! And I didnt even mean a fridge I meant an electric cool box So I've started another thread. Hope you all find it.

Fantastic!!
Great thing to head into nationals with too

Yes we just managed to get formal diagnosis and on waiting list and then covid happened!

Classified last October!

And yes he's not so mini anymore. 17yo and 5" 10!!!!!

He has hereditary spastic paraplegia which is quite rare and very few swimmers that have competed with the same condition.

A 1.5 second PB is mad for 100 free!

It is!!! He did 1.4 off his LC time at regionals and then same off his SC yesterday. TBF he hasn't raced SC since October but he'd been hanging round 61/62 seconds for a year before that!

Fina have voted to create a third competition/category for transgender athletes and won't allow biological males (with Y chromosome) to compete with biological woman if they've gone through any part of make puberty or started hormone therapy beyond the age of 12.

Huge victory for the protection of woman's sport.

Hoorah! 👍👍👍👍🏊‍♂️🏊‍♂️🏊‍♂️totally most sensible and fairest thing to do! Yey 😀

(Now all they need to do is even the age-group playing field somehow, so late developer, December kids don't get overlooked by coaches, and miss out on medals in the early years, and I will be a fan for life 👍👍)

Yes - that's just brilliant news that FINA has been really clear about protecting the women's category in swimming.

When DD was younger, we used to have an age on the day policy so you only aged up on the day of your birthday (not in the U.K.).

I'm convinced this is what kept DD swimming as she's born in the last quarter of the year. It gave her a chance at medalling as a young swimmer.

I think the US still has this in place.

Different UK meets have different age rules - some are age on the day, some are age on 31st December. Scottish National Age Groups used to be used to be something odd like age on 1st April.

DD has an early Jan birthday, which is only good for swimming! Too close to Christmas for parties and often only gets 1 present for both.

Great news from Fina, I hope it sticks.

I also think they need to back this up by changing gender to sex on the swimmjng.org website when you search rankings and times etc.

The number of meets my two have been the youngest in age group because their birthday was the week before and its age as at meet ... They have a relatively early birthday so I'm clearly entering the wrong ones!!

It's swings and roundabouts for birthdays for pre-teens, isn't it.

DD has a summer birthday, so it took her quite a few years to recognise that she was fairly bright and sporty compared to the September-born kids at Primary
Level.

There used to be an Open Meet that did "age on day" a week before her birthday - she loved competing there.

I was gala convenor for a mini meet that was a week before DS’s birthday - although we didn’t set “slower than” times we did say it was for swimmers not swimming at District Level. DS was very cross that I wouldn’t let him enter because he would have won everything easily - not a good look when you’re entry sec as well.

Just out of interest, World Champs semis/finals are on bbc iPlayer. Im currently parked up in the sofa watching!

Ds always falls well on age at date end of season meets (or did he won't be doing them this yr as at British) as an august birthday many in his age at Dec 31st competitors had already gone up an age group by July.

That's even when competing against AB swimmers!

I've been watching too - a lot of very fast young swimmers coming through and then you have the 42 year old Nicholas Santos taking the bronze medal in the 50m fly!

Well after a nightmare 400m at nationals where ds panicked after 150m and backed out of racing he's come back into training this week looking stronger than he has for weeks.

Hopefully one of those short term brain blocks and resilience things. He went straight to his coach and asked to do some more distance sets to get his confidence back.

I never liked doing distance sets!

@itsgettingweird sounds like he knows what to do to overcome it, well done him.

DS is quite keen on distance swimming because he tends to get out muscled by the bigger built kids in the sprints. Hasnt managed to persuade his coach to put him in anything longer than 400m yet though.

Ds won't swim more than 400 as a para swimmer.

I think he's just struggled to have his focus since mum died. Ds is also autistic so tends to get anxious when he has big emotions as he can't process them.

But he's had 2 really good days of training and looking more focussed than he has for weeks so 🤞 he's over it for British nationals 🤣🤣

@itsgettingweird - DS is in the younger age groups so I expect you'll have been and gone by the time we get there for the Sat pm sessions

Yes probably. His 400 is mid session and he'll cool down and I expect we'll leave as the younger swimmers are arriving for their warm up session. If he doesn't bottle it again (🤦‍♀️) we may be back for the final so as that session finishes!

I can't see DS making the final however he has been knocking huge amounts off his time each race - I think this is a tad unsustainable!!!

As long as he doesn't do what ds did at nationals at the weekend - add 15 seconds 🤦🏼‍♀️🤣 - then he's doing well!

I wish they'd let us get the spectator tickets booked!!

I know!!! I wish they'd also have a sensible way of doing bookings. It seems odd one family capsule get 10 tickets meaning others get none.

They should allocate set number max per swimmer which stays within the capacity and then sell any extras on first come first serve.

Although another parent and I worked out that that with smaller heats with split age groups and finals there should be enough capacity for a few spectators per swimmer and many won't want that. Well I do t - there's only ds and I!!!!