2020 INTERNATIONAL SWIMMING LEAGUE – MATCH 8
- Thursday, November 5: 4pm-6pm CET/10am-noon U.S. Eastern
- Friday, November 6: 4pm-6pm CET/10am-noon U.S. Eastern
- Duna Arena – Budapest, Hungary
- Short Course Meters (SCM) format
- ISL Technical Handbook
- 2020 ISL Scoring Format
- 2020 ISL Prize Money and Bonuses
- How To Watch
- Omega Results
- Teams: London Roar, Tokyo Frog Kings, Cali Condors, New York Breakers
- Full day 1 results
The Cali Condors women and London Roar men have both chosen breaststroke as the event du jour for the Match #8 skins races.
ISL Match #8 Skins Events
- Men – Breaststroke (London Roar)
- Women – Breaststroke (Cali Condors)
Under new ISL rules for 2020, the winner of the medley relays on day 1 of the meet choose the strokes for the 50 meter ‘skins’ races on day 2 of the meet. In those ‘skins’ events, 3 rounds of 50s are held in succession with a short break, with the field being whittled from 8 to 4 to 2 swimmers.
Team Scores ISL Match #8, Day 1
- Cali Condors – 255
- London Roar – 246.5
- Tokyo Frog Kings – 210
- New York Breakers – 167.5
For the Cali Condors, after dabbling with Olivia Smoliga in ‘skins’ in their last meet, they’ve gone back to ol’ reliable: Lilly King. While Smoliga did well in her shot, King is a perfect 28-for-28 in her ISL career across all events.
What’s more, the Condors have some ‘insurance’ in that event in the form of Molly Hannis. She very-nearly beat King in the individual on Thursday, finishing just .05 seconds behind. King is still the favorite, given the way she handled her first shot.
Way back at Meet #1, King was nearly-untouchable in the 50 breaststroke, stealing points from Hannis in the final with an unreal 28.90 – her fastest split of the three rounds (and, incidentally, faster than she was in the individual 50 on Thursday morning in Match #8).
On the men’s side, this feels like the highest probability of an upset – in the sense that the team that has chosen the ‘skins’ stroke has won that event at every meet so far.
Peaty is the star, and so London is keen to see him in this field, but Michael Andrew was just .16 behind in the individual and Caeleb Dressel, with his huge starts and turns, was just .17 behind.
The last time they had this choice, London chose backstroke, which makes sense as they have arguably the two best in the league in the 50 back in Christian Diener and Guilherme Guido. But in Thursday’s individual event, those two were both well off their best and were upset by Cali’s Coleman Stewart (23.21 to Diener’s 23.29 and Guido’s 23.31).
Any time Caeleb Dressel is in the pool, there’s some risk of a Cali Condors win, but after Thursday’s result, that risk seems, in the immediate view, less than the one in the men’s 50 backstroke. With the Roar just 9 points behind the Condors heading into day 2 in a battle between the league’s two remaining unbeaten teams, that’s the matchup that matters most.
In retrospect, I’m not sure I like the idea of having the MR winners pick the skins events, especially if the same team usually wins both. It becomes a “rich get richer” scenario.
I do like the skins events, though. I wonder if anyone though of just running the MR events in the skins format. This combines two exciting aspects of competitive swim — skins and relays. You could probably even shorten the gap between heats.
I agree. But I do like the variation in skins.
Any other ideas for how to get variation into skins without so substantially advantaging any specific team?
Some sort of lottery system based on how many individual event winners you have. More wins = more eggs in the basket.
My experiences with ISL have been that they really like “control” and that the idea of anything random or based on a draw wouldn’t be within their aesthetic.
But, I do think you’re onto something interesting.
Randomness is bad for betting too which they’re trying to appeal to in the future.
Another good point.
But then that is still favouring the very strong teams.
In the UK we normally have skins as a lucky dip with the stroke being pulled out of a hat at random before each round. Would make for a more open contest!
I think the idea I saw floated out here about having the last place team of the relay pick – maybe have to be last that’s still under the time cutoff to prevent too much blatant tanking by the “B” relay? Or maybe team losing the respective mens/women’s points gets to pick?
I think the team in last after day one should get to choose the skins.
While I agree with the “balancing effect” that a rule like this would produce:
ISL is clearly trying hard to promote 100% effort in every race. Thinks like jackpots and penalties discourage just throwing random swimmers into events like the 4IM. I could see a team who is fighting for third purposefully throwing a couple races on day 1, to pick skins and have an advantage on day 2. Wouldnt make for great TV to see two swimmers fighting to be last in a race, however hilarious that would be
But the jackpot would actually cancel this effect out…two swimmers who are fighting to lose in the above way will have already lost all their points to a jackpot swim making the fight moot.
Fastest (Fina points for example) swim of the day. That swimmers team chooses
FINA points are too flawed to be used for anything.
Simply pick the stroke from a hat for each round. No one gets to choose. As someone said, it gives too much advantage to an already strong team. At age group level, my son’s qualification for skins was via the top 8 times in the 200 IM, then the strokes were drawn from a hat for each 50, so no one knew what was coming. Obviously you couldn’t do exactly the same with qualification from 200 IM in this meet, but you would have to think very carefully who you would select for the skins, as it would need to be someone who could swim anything. Dressel would do well in this format of course.
Honestly, I would have chosen anything to keep Dressel out of the pool.
I totally agree with you, especially for the skins; Dressel is a specialist in the skins. Any team should pick backstroke if they win the men’s medley relay (except Iron probably).
I’d like to see Szabo vs Dressel in fly skins but it looks unlikely to happen even when CAC and AQC meet in the final match of the season. LAC will win the medley relay.
Then they should have chosen backstroke.
I think this comes down to dressel and peaty
Wowza