The “Lezak Moment” and Masters Swimming
During the 2008 Summer Olympics, the swimming world—and much of the regular world—thrilled to the spectacular swim of Jason Lezak in the 4x100 freestyle relay. Lezak, trailing by a body length in the anchor leg of the event, saw the French swimmer in the next lane and was inspired to a final effort that brought his team victory. Any competitive swimmer at any level could identify with a race like this one. Lezak later described looking over and seeing Alain Bernard leading and having a little silent conversation with himself, at first mentally shaking his head in resignation, then convincing himself to try to win.
One of the wonderful things about Masters Swimming is that it brings this kind of excitement and inspiration, the essence of athletic competition, to everyone who competes in a Masters meet: We all have the chance to surpass ourselves because we can all see our closest competition challenging us in the very next lane, like Jason Lezak did.
Oops! Strike that last paragraph! You would think it would be true, but in fact only a very few of us in any meet actually do get to savor this experience. The way Masters meets are seeded puts nearly all swimmers so far away from their closest competition that they can’t see each other. A trivially simple seeding policy change could rectify this situation.
As a matter of policy, USMS seeds meets with faster swimmers in the center lanes and slower swimmers arrayed to either side. This approach is inherited from “eliminations”-type competition designed for interscholastic and youth meets, where the fastest swimmers qualify for advancement. Of course, it is completely out of place and illogical in USMS, where any swimmer can enter any meet, and all swimmers are encouraged to feel that they can set personal records. What most of those swimmers miss, usually without realizing it, is the inspiration to excel that is provided by swimming next to their competition.
Here’s how the current bad seeding method works, using a simple but quite realistic example: If there are five swimmers, with five different seed times, for an event, and five lanes in the pool, today’s seeding method places the fastest swimmer in the middle lane, the second and third fastest in the adjacent lanes, and the fourth and fifth fastest in the outside lanes. It’s easy to see that the two outside swimmers can’t even catch a glimpse of each other—their closest competitors. Of the three remaining swimmers, only two, the fastest and second-fastest, can see their closest competition: each other.
The third-fastest is separated by a whole lane from the second-fastest (and by two lanes from his other comrade, Number Four). It’s reasonable to assume that he might have a chance to beat the third, or at least to be drawn to a personal best in the effort, if he could only see how closely he trails him. But he can’t...he’s swimming in an adult meet operating under children’s rules. It’s just as bad for the outside swimmers. In a way, it’s bad for the second-fastest swimmer as well, since possibly the third-fastest creeping up on him, glimpsed at a turn, could drive him to greater efforts if they were in adjacent lanes.
I used a five-lane, five-swimmer example to illustrate the concept, but the situation is really worse for a typical meet with six or eight lanes filled for a heat. No matter how many lanes there are, only two swimmers in the heat (ignoring those of identical speeds), the fastest and next-fastest, will get the indescribable benefit of swimming next to their competition. The bigger the pool, the smaller the percentage of swimmers who are rationally seeded.
And it gets even worse: In a popular event where several heats are needed, the seeding software that Masters meet directors blithely adopt from high-school meets often puts several close competitors in totally separate heats. This software is blind to the existence of age groups as they are defined in USMS; it assumes that all the swimmers in a heat are in a single category.
Sometimes the argument is made, “The fastest swimmer should get the center lane.” In the context of Masters Swimming, this idea does not stand up to cursory examination. USMS prides itself on having an age-group structure that makes every single swimmer, of every single age, welcome in our competitions. This is the very soul of Masters swimming. That unavoidably means that there are as many “fastest swimmers” in a meet and in a heat as there are age groups represented. More that that, even swimmers who are not fastest in their age groups are entitled to expect the best competitive experience that the organizers can provide.
Another argument that is made implies that seeding order is unimportant, that one should “Swim your own race and not look at the competition.” Say that to Jason Lezak.
Here’s how Masters meets should be seeded: The entries for an event should be arranged in seed-time order. The first eight (or however many lanes there are) should be put in Heat One, proceeding from Lane One to Lane Eight, slowest in One, fastest in Eight, the rest in seed-time order across the pool. The next eight go to the next heat, across the lanes in speed order, and so on. Of course adjustments can be made so nobody swims alone in a heat.
This method, only this method, ensures the highest probability that every Masters swimmer will swim next to his or her closest competitors, and thus will have the highest probability of enjoying one of those Lezak Moments. If this is adopted as USMS policy I can guarantee that a host of personal records will fall.
Henry Mecredy
USMS member since 1986
©2009; reproduction encouraged with attribution