Reply to Why did NVSL move relay carnival a week earlier and do we think this change is permanent?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our team won't let anyone swim
In an A meet without a time trial, makeup time trial or B meet time.[/quote]

Make-up time trial = after practice at our pool. [/quote]

How? who is the starter? Timers? [/quote]

This could provide consolation, or anger, but hand timing swim races is notoriously inaccurate. Times are almost always faster than the real times, and the clerk is constantly trying to reconcile times, place order etc. Even in usa swimming with touchpads, you would be surprised at how much hand waving there is when there is no pad time. It can mean the difference between making a cut or not, but the officials usually have only a few seconds to look at a time before going on to the next. In summer swim, kids are making A meets or All stars or whatever off janky times, which is fine because it's all just for fun.[/quote]

When I’ve been a backup timer at club meets with a touch pad, my times are nearly always within +/- 0.12 of what shows up on the big board.  It’s rare that two swimmers from the same summer team are so closely matched that such a small error would make the difference between which one swims in the A meet and which doesn’t. Now on the margins of being an All Star or an alternate that’s a different story.  Just swim faster so that’s not a factor. All Stars does use touch pads. [/quote]

You should time at every meet. I do admin officiating and most timers aren’t that close. Timers think they are doing well because their times agree with their co-timer, but they can both be well off the pad time. They then come to us and say, “I think the pad is malfunctioning”.

Some common reasons why hand timing is usually faster than pad times are human reaction time at the start and anticipation at the finish. Timers often listen for the buzzer rather than look for the light. In both cases, the stopwatch is started after the actual start because of human reaction time (~0.2 sec), but if the buzzer is far away, the sound takes longer to travel and the reaction time is even slower.

You would think that stopping the watch would have the same issue and would cancel out the start, but since you can see the swimmer coming to the wall, and the angle at which you are trying to watch the swimmer without falling into the pool, timers often anticipate the touch and stop the watch before the actual touch. Especially when we are rooting for the swimmer and want them to finish well.

If you are 0.12 sec off on average, you are probably starting the watch within 0.2 sec after the actual start and are much better than most at actually stopping the watch for the final touch, perhaps even stopping it a touch late.

As an ao, I can tell you it can get messy with timers. People forget to push the plunger, start the watch late and don’t raise their hand to replace it, and if there’s a soft touch, we have to guess what happened. 
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