On the women’s side, 17-18 National Age Group Records have gotten to a ridiculous level. There have been so many good, young swimmers come through over the last 5 or so years, that these age group marks aren’t that dissimilar to the National Records (even moreso once Missy Franklin passes another birthday).
That’s why it’s so impressive when one of these records goes down, which is what happened last night in the women’s 200 IM at the AT&T USA Swimming Winter National Championships.
Liz Pelton’s 2:10.02 bests, by just .03 seconds, the old National Age Group mark set by Katie Hoff in 2006 at 2:10.05. At the time, Hoff’s swim was also an American Record, done at the 2006 Summer Nationals in Irvine. Here’s the comparative splits:
Hoff: 28.51 | 1:01.88 (33.37) | 1:39.49 (37.61) | 2:10.05 (30.56)
Pelton: 27.86 | 1:00.42 (32.56) | 1:39.22 (38.80) | 2:10.02 (30.80)
As you can see, Pelton has a much stronger front-half than did Hoff, but Hoff, who is a strong breaststroker and a much better distance swimmer than Pelton, closed very well. It seems as though Pelton has resparked herself training again under coach Paul Yetter at the newly-formed T2 Aquatics in Florida.
Hoff was also in Thursday’s race, where she finished 4th in 2:12.55.
I’m with you there coacherik. The stand alone window is so annoying.
Please tell me I am not the only one who hates the new live timing windows…
What was wrong with the old format? You could track splits and heat finish now it just looks like result you would find on an old NES sports game.