With an expected 1,400 swimmers descending upon the Greensboro Aquatic Center for this weeks YMCA Short Course National Championships, meet organizers are proactively preparing for the chloramine onslaught that is expected with that many swimmers in such a confined space.
That’s roughly 400 fewer swimmers than were at Winter Juniors in December, where Caeleb Dressel was infamously taken to the hospital after swimming a record 18.94 in the 50 yard free.
Paddock, the company that made the “Evacuator” that admittedly failed at Winter Juniors, is on site to ensure that air-flow remains unimpeded, which was one of the major issues at Winter Juniors (banners blocking air flow).
Greensboro has also put up very clear, very unambiguous, very obvious signs around the pools to, simply put, not pee in them (as can be seen above). The issue of peeing in pools has become hotter-and-hotter after every major news outlet in the world last week ran a video about not peeing in the pool and the health consequences.
But there’s still no guarantees that air quality will be markedly better than it will be than it was in December – that proof will come this week, as the Greensboro Aquatic Center looks to recover its reputation for giving people the not-so-lovingly nicknamed “GAC hack,” referring to the cough swimmers have from swimmers inhaling the chloramines. SwimSwam’s Mel Stewart will be at YMCA Nationals all week, and will share daily reports on air quality.
Day 1, the air is very clean and crisp, Mel tells us, but that’s no surprise: there’s only two teams in the pool doing light warmups. When the water really starts churning on Tuesday, we’ll get a better sense.
Paddock is a SwimSwam partner, and contributed this report by sharing the image of the sign above.
Cut times for Y Nationals:
http://www.ymcaswimminganddiving.org/nats/2014SC/2014ShortCourseQualifyingTimes.pdf
Cut times for the recently completed Junior Nationals (page 6):
https://www.teamunify.com/recndncsa/UserFiles/File/2014NCSA.pdf
Not to compare, but the Y Nationals cuts for men look pretty solid — slower than J-Nats, sure, but not bad for a national meet; there is some decent rigor there. The Y cuts for women, on the other hand….
— 1:55.99/5:09.39 for 200/500 frees;
— 59.79 for 100 back
— 2:11.79 for 200 IM
— 1:08.29 for 100 breaststroke
….are not what I’d call terribly rigorous times — for a national meet. Those are decent times for a decent high school swimmer in a modestly sized state… Read more »
Comparing Y-Nats to Summer Jr’s isn’t even fair, take a step back and look at Sectionals.I think the 50 free is the only time that is even equal to a Super Sectional cut, every single other swim is easier to make. How is that fast for a national level meet?
Chestrockwell- What are the times you are looking at? From what I can tell the cuts for y nats are faster than sectionals in just about every event.
I believe that chestrockwell was referencing the Eastern Zone SuperSectional qual times (SCY only) from last summer. He is (almost) correct in that the only YNats cut times from this spring that are faster than the EZ SuperSectional are Women’s 50 Free and 1650 Free. Every other individual cut was faster at EZ last summer.
Back last summer when I did a comparison this Sectional Meet was the fastest Sectional meet in the country. It had the fastest qual time (again, SCY only – even though it was a LCM meet) of any Sectional meet in 9 of the 14 Women’s events and 8 of the 14 Men’s events. And the second fastest in 5 of the Men’s.
Some… Read more »
If you pee in the pool and think it’s “no big deal” just think about it the next time you’re in a facility with air quality issues. There needs to be a sea change in the attitude swimmers (in general) have about peeing in the pool. It’s just not necessary and it DOES have deleterious effects.
How warm was the air temperature in the pool the last time? I’m not completely sure about the chemical process, but if chloramine is indeed released when pool water evaporates, the temperature of both the pool and the air are important. Warmer air can hold larger amounts of water vapor, so to speak; more evaporation can occur. This combined with the other factors (peeing in the pool), could adversely affect the athletes.
In regards to the peeing in the pool… an article that isn’t so cynical.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/03/ask-ars-how-much-pee-in-a-pool-would-kill-you/
Air was really bad at Juniors – so much that many swimmers had to go to urgent care and had lingering illness. Shame on USA Swimming for putting the meet there when they knew there were problems from YNATs last year….and too bad the facilities manager did not evaluate all options to keep the air as clear as possible. (In defense of the manager, heard the air was better by Saturday night…but the damage was done…and it wasn’t just for those who were used to swimming outdoors.) And, if making the meet smaller allows those there to be healthy and compete at their fullest, than make the meet time standards faster.
I really like the way GAC is being proactive. It’s time to really take this seriously. While the nitrogen compounds in perspiration are an issue, it is vastly more so with urine. Perspiration is going to happen, urine can be controlled. GAC has done their part, now it’s up to the next level: coaches need to do their part and tell swimmers that in the best interest of EVERYONE, they need to go to the bathrooms or showers.
The next step beyond that? A boilerplate policy by USA Swimming and Y Swimming to include these rules and requirements in the meet literature. Include this for all meets, but ESPECIALLY those national and sectional meets. It’s not okay to pee in… Read more »
Is it too negative of me to say that the issue can be easily resolved by making the time standards more competitive and getting the total number of competitors lower? Or make rules like if you’ve swum at a National Championship, you cannot swim at Jrs. Even 1400 swimmers seems ridiculous.
I don’t think it’s all that easy… I think the cuts need to be stiffened. But not drastically. One of my suspicions as to why age group swimming is deeper than ever is that more kids are getting big meet experience, second swims etc.
We want more kids at the age group level making cuts and getting bigger meet experience but we need to be sure they have a place to go as they mature into senior swimmers, or we’ll lose them.
I have been coaching at this meet for the last 4 years and the meet has seen pretty big drops in the cut times. I was there today and the air quality was great. much better than the last 2 years. we will see after day one.
Swam at GAC numerous times, great pool with little air quality issues from my experiences. I also noticed that at Juniors the teams that were complaining most about the air quality were the ones that normally practice outdoors – could this be why Dreesel had problems?
KD – it’s possible, but the Paddock folks admitted that the quality was poor in some areas, and there will always be teams that practice outdoors. A better description of the teams that had the most issues would be that it was teams who were sitting in certain “dead spot” areas.
All word was at a normal sized meet (<1000 swimmers), the air quality was fine with the primary Paddock system. When that size was doubled, though, the system was overwhelmed. So one would expect it to be fine for NCAA's next year, but Winter Nationals will be the big question.