Hey guys, has anyone been following the FINA World Cup? The first meet was last weekend in Durban, South Africa. I've been writing up articles about it for my website, and the more I've gotten into it, the cooler I think the event is. Basically, swimmers get individual scores, and the winner at the end gets a huge cash prize. It doesn't attract the biggest names, but it's a great chance to see swimmers who specialize in sprint distances that normally don't compete in the Olympics. There were 4 SCM World Records broken at the first meet.

As of now, the scoring is based on a meet-by-meet basis, with the highest scoring individual race based on FINA points (kinda like power points) getting the most points, and so on down to 10 places at each meet. I'd like to see them tweak it a little and base it on the best 2 races at each meet, to force the swimmers to be slightly more well-rounded, since most of the swimmers swim at least 2 events anyways, but it's still a fun format.

Check it out, let me know what you guys think. Any more information you'd like to see on the dashboard?

http://swimcoachtools.com/WorldCup2009HomePage.aspx

I want a times comparison for the leaders in their new FINA approved suits vs. their lifetime bests wearing the previous approved suits!

How mch slower are they?

I'd like to see that as well. Unfortunately, the new FINA regulations don't kick in until January. There's an article about it on the site if you're interested. Thus far, only NCAA, USA-Swimming and NFHS have put in regulations, and there really haven't been enough/any major meets under those jurisdictions to draw any relevant data from. I plan on doing a big statistical comparison at the end of the short course season to try and see what the effect of the suits are. I've already taken some notes on how I want to design a big spread sheet, but if anyone has a bigger statistics backround than me and wants to contribute/has any ideas on that project, please let me know, either on here or by email at askacoachSCT@gmail.com