USA Swimming has released the schedule for the upcoming Duel in the Pool that will take place on Friday and Saturday in Atlanta, Georgia. Most of the Europeans are stateside by now, and the Americans are making their way to Georgia for the big show.
| Friday, Dec. 16 – 7 Eastern | Saturday, Dec. 17 – 2 Eastern |
| 400m Medley Relay | 800m Free |
| 400m IM | 200m Free |
| 100m Free | 100m Back |
| 200m Back | 100m Breast |
| 200m Breast | 200m Fly |
| 100m Fly | 50m Free |
| 400m Free | 200m IM |
| 400m Free Relay |
Based on this schedule (no start lists have been released yet), it will be interesting to see what Mr. Lochte’s schedule will be. It seems like a good chance that he will sit out the medley relay, though there may be pressure to leave him in it to play for the TV audience.
Missy Franklin’s schedule becomes quite complicated. She’ll be on both relays, but may have to swim back-to-back individual races on both days – the 100 free and 200 back on day 1, and then the 200 free and 100 back on day 2. That will be a tough schedule, but she’s shown the ability before to conquer tough schedules, and in this dual-meet format there’s bound to be difficult schedules.
As for the TV Schedule, both days of this event will be aired LIVE (a rarity for swimming), with Friday night’s session going on Universal Sports at 7 PM Eastern, and Saturday being aired on NBC at 2 Eastern (to be re-aired that evening at 7 Eastern back on Universal Sports).
Scoring
Though the pool is 8 lanes, each team will be allowed only 3 individual entries in each event. When you look at the European Roster, and for example their bevy of men’s distance swimmers, it will be interesting to see how they spread out the entries. Relays will be one for each team, head-to-head, winner-take-all. Each athlete can enter up to 6 total events, in any combination they wish of individual and relays.
What will be really interesting is if the meet comes down to a tie-breaker. Each team will throw upa 200 medley relay with two men and two women, with the winnre of that race taking the meet.
INDIVIDUAL EVENTS
1st Place 5 points
2nd Place 3 points
3rd Place 1 point
4th Place 0 points
5th Place 0 points
6th Place 0 points
RELAY EVENTS
1st Place 7 points
2nd Place 0 points
Pool Seating
For this year’s Duel, USA Swimming has expanded seating at the Georgia Tech pool by building up the deck into an extra grand-stand right at the turn end of the pool. At the same time, they’ve also reduced ticket prices to $25, and will offer partial refunds for those who paid the higher prices for them. As of the posting of this article on Tuesday evening, there were still several hundred seats available, with the caveat that tickets must be bought by Wednesday, December 15th. That means that no tickets will be sold at the door. Go here to buy tickets online.
looks like they r using all 8 lanes! missy & jeanette not in the 100 free…
gonna 2 look at some more entry lists…
Yeah, the 8 lane thing is odd to me. Maybe outside two are exhibition? USA Swimming information says only 6 lanes will be used. Guess we’ll have to watch and find out!
For your digging convenience, emily, check out this post to get a combined day 1 psych sheet.
http://theswimmerscircle.com/blog/day-1-start-lists-analysis-for-duel-in-the-pool/
start lists r now up! 🙂
http://www.omegatiming.com/index_home.htm#swimming/racearchives/2011/Duel/Index_by_events.htm
For all that metro Atlanta has some really excellent swimmers & clubs, it’s more of a baseball/basketball/football kind of town for spectator sports. I suspect it got the meet because they’ve got a nice show pool from the Olympics and are also an East Coast international airline hub, making travel relatively easy for the Euro stars.
Ok, I’m correcting about seats still available. How can american people not be interested in seeing some of the best swimmers in the world? I learn english every day.
Good comment from beachmouse! I forgot it was on american tv with commercials every 10 minutes. And I’m perhaps optimistic.
Aidan13,
how interesting you have so much insight into what *really* happens in the USA and Euro teams, as well as great insight into the minds of those swimmers.
I would be willing to bet 80 percent of the Americans are not anywhere past 3 days rest. Hoff apparently is (I read that on Twitter too)….and so maybe the other FAST swimmers are as well. But really, why would anyone do a full 10-21 day rest for a two-session SCM meet in December? It’s one thing if you’re coming off some European Championships and you just keep the rest going through this meet….and yes beating the US would be great. But really, the US swimmers don’t care that much — they know that there’s not a country in the world that can stay with them for an entire meet, so who cares if an all-star team wins. They don’t… Read more »
While there presumably won’t be awards ceremonies to give the multi-event athletes that little time break, a properly-scheduled 3 minute break for television commercials could get Franklin a little more rest between events.