What someone views as being critical, I think others (those that grew up swimming) just view it as matter of the sport of swimming. Swim times are cut and dry, and USA swimming tracks and stack ranks every age group swimmer for every swim event.
Teams stack rank times, and swimmers stack rank themselves, team wise, state wise, nationally, and use USA swimmings age group motivational times.
This is exactly the problem with the dick swinging from swimmers (I compete in 5-10 masters meets per year so let me explain).
Swimming inherently is a front of pack sport. There is literally no place for being slow.
The sport self selects the slow kids out of the pool and eventually the kids who are not particularly fast quit. This is the way it is.
I can go to a regional 70.3 and be 5th out of the water in my age group out of 150 people and end up 5th out of 150 after the bike and run, but there are 145 people in the tri slower than me, so I can give myself a bullshit pat on the back. I can also go to a local swim meet and be 5th out of 5 in a 400IM or a 1500 free. There is no MOP and BOP in swim meets. Everyone is fast. No pat on the back for me, because I suck so badly relative to real swimmers
But that is the problem with the sport. There is no place for slow people.
When slow people race, its only those who are not lifetime swimmers and don’t care to be last, or they are people like Lionel who will have swimmers laugh at him for his times being slower than 13 year olds. Lionel does not give a shit about these talk downs, and the rest of us finishing last out of 5 at a swim meet don’t care either.
But most people care about finishing last or perceived to be slow. Why do so many triathlete go do the local 5km or 10km run or local bike TT but they WON’T touch a swim meet with a ten foot pole. Anyone who does an Olympic tri, can easily race the 50/100/200/400/800/1500m free in any swim meet yet almost no triathletes show up.
Its because most people are too self conscious around “real swimmers” to endure being scrutinized for being “that triathlete hack who can’t swim”
Good on Lionel for not caring. I’d personally kill for his freestyle times and would be happy to be mocked at for being slower than 13 year old kids.
But guess what. A lot of people care. They don’t want to be the last kid hitting the wall in a pool with ten lanes with eveyone watching them finish last. They eventually drop out. You just get left with the faster/talented people