monty and i were talking, and here’s the question: who’s got the best combined time, 500yd short course free + mile (or 1600m converted to mile). men and women.
rules: it has to have been achieved in an actual meet or race, on the track and in the pool. no training times; no 10k times or 200IM times; just 1 mile on the track in a race, and 500yd in a pool in a race. verifiable. must have accomplished this by the end of the summer after HS graduation. the times don’t have to have been achieved in the same year, just at any time prior to the deadline.
i think the gold standard would be sub-9min (boys) and sub-10min (girls). i doubt either has ever been done, but i’m interested. i’d like to know whether any of these folks have every competed in both and what their times were:
ryan bolton
scott molina
jeff kostoff
amanda white
steve duplinsky
jarrod schumaker
alan webb
I can’t find results online anywhere, nor do I know if he ran an official track meet, but TJ Fry (won Ironkids in 1988) swam about 4:35-ish in the 500 yards and was a top notch triathlete, but didn’t race much after college. He went to one of the high schools in The Woodlands, TX.
I would think that Hunter is also up there, but he didn’t really come on until college.
I could only manage about 9:49 (4:56, 4:53) for the standards.
i think the gold standard would be sub-9min (boys) and sub-10min (girls). i doubt either has ever been done
I know a local boy who graduated last year was close to the standard. Last year he went a 4:18 1600 and a 1:54 200IM. I know you said no IM times but I can’t find his best 500 time right now - I’ll keep looking. I’ve seen him swim and know he’s capable of going under 4:50 in the 500 but I don’t know if he swam it last year.
He’s running at a big ten school now. (No more swimming).
There are not many fast swimmers who run or visa versa so you aren’t going to find too many high shcoolers who have posted fast times on the track and in the pool in the same year. My guess is if anyone has made your standard its going to be a really fast swimmer who dabbled in track rather than the other way around.
The best doubler I knew was more of a sprinter to middle distance type. She was like 22 high/23 low in the 50 yard freestyle and sub- 2:10 in the track 800M.
I found the 500 time. I don’t want to put the kids name on the internet but he went 4:18 in the 1600 and 4:52 in the 500 during the 2007-08 school year which puts him at 9:10. He did a 1:45 200 free so my guess is he could go in the low 4:40’s in the 500 if he swam it rested which would have given him a real shot at the 9:00 mark.
FWIW, my daughter is at about 11:30. She’s the only girl who’s 1600 and 500 times I know
monty and i were talking, and here’s the question: who’s got the best combined time, 500yd short course free + mile (or 1600m converted to mile). men and women.
rules: it has to have been achieved in an actual meet or race, on the track and in the pool. no training times; no 10k times or 200IM times; just 1 mile on the track in a race, and 500yd in a pool in a race. verifiable. must have accomplished this by the end of the summer after HS graduation. the times don’t have to have been achieved in the same year, just at any time prior to the deadline.
i think the gold standard would be sub-9min (boys) and sub-10min (girls). i doubt either has ever been done, but i’m interested. i’d like to know whether any of these folks have every competed in both and what their times were:
ryan bolton
scott molina
jeff kostoff
amanda white
steve duplinsky
jarrod schumaker
alan webb
anyone have any combined times they can report?
Senior year in HS I went 5:12.27 for the 500 at our conference meet, and 5:18 for the 1600. 10:30, not even your gold standard for girls
In general I was right around the bottom cutoff for varsity in both sports.
Also that year in the summer I went 2:27 for an Olympic distance (Denver) (Not blazing, I know. shoot me. :D)
Maybe its time that Alan Webb gives triathlon a go. He has run great 5k and 10k times and has blazing 800m speed to win a sprint finish. He certainly has been sucking at track recently.
Didn’t he get a scholarship to Notre Dame for both cross-country and Swimming?
As an aside, I was talking with a high ranking coach in Canada recently and we got talking about triathlon talent development and he said that the U.S. should be absolutely killing it in Triathlon at the ITU and other levels, but for some reason are not. It has been concluded that the best triathlon recruits and kids with potantial are those standout age-group swimmers that can also run. My guess and the coach concurred, is that the U.S. has possibly the highest number of kids like this( great swimmers and runners) - way more than any other country - but for some reason this has not converted into a big pool of triathlon talent at the top.
Didn’t he get a scholarship to Notre Dame for both cross-country and Swimming?
As an aside, I was talking with a high ranking coach in Canada recently and we got talking about triathlon talent development and he said that the U.S. should be absolutely killing it in Triathlon at the ITU and other levels, but for some reason are not. It has been concluded that the best triathlon recruits and kids with potantial are those standout age-group swimmers that can also run. My guess and the coach concurred, is that the U.S. has possibly the highest number of kids like this( great swimmers and runners) - way more than any other country - but for some reason this has not converted into a big pool of triathlon talent at the top.
Let someone put together college triathlon teams at the level of swimming and running in the NCAA/NAIA and start offering scholarships, and you’d see a greater increase.
Maybe its time that Alan Webb gives triathlon a go. He has run great 5k and 10k times and has blazing 800m speed to win a sprint finish. He certainly has been sucking at track recently.
BJ
Interestingly, as I was looking for Webb’s swim time, I came across a 1999 newsletter for the Potomac Valley Masters swimmer that had a memorial piece for a local masters swimmer/triathlete (Jim McDonell), who passed away at age 47 from non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The article said:
“It was important to Jim that his belongings, especially his triathlete stuff, go to good use. Of particular note, he had one request that his racing bike go to Alan Webb, a tenth grader at South Lakes High School. Although he didn’t know Alan well, he knew his Dad through church and knew Alan was an accomplished swimmer and runner and that he wanted to do a triathlon. The only thing that Alan didn’t have was a good bike; now he does.”
That was 10 years ago. Wonder what happened to the bike? BTW, TriDaveO is right–Webb’s high school mile time was 3:53.43, not the 3:55.3 that I gave in my earlier post. The 3:55 was Jim Ryun’s high school record.
Now to be fair, lets add in the 400m free and the 1500m run. Most the world runs those distances, and we can do a conversion to compare them. What about Simon Lessing, Simon Whitfield, Javier Gomex, ect??? ANd what about Motthram from OZ, he had to have close to Webbs run time, but was he a swimmer? I think he was a lifeguard, and he did do one season as a pro triathlete, just do not know if he had it together in high school…
Some other guys I can think of from the old days are Andy Carlson, Paul Donahue, Greg Welch, Brad Bevan, maybe Rob Mackel… I think the best bet is the Aussies, because so many of them were lifeguards too, so the swimmers ran, and the runners swam at that young age. I can think of a bunch of college age combos, but going back to high school makes it a bit more difficult.
Dan and I were looking at some swim times, and noticed that there were two Hinshaw brothers in the 500 free. Looks like they are the kids of Chris Hinshaw, an old pro triathlete, that once held the Ironman swim record. One swam about 4:25, and the other just under 4:30… I have a sneaking suspicion that at least one of them runs…Anyone in Northern ca know the Hinshaw family???
As an aside, I was talking with a high ranking coach in Canada recently and we got talking about triathlon talent development and he said that the U.S. should be absolutely killing it in Triathlon at the ITU and other levels, but for some reason are not. It has been concluded that the best triathlon recruits and kids with potantial are those standout age-group swimmers that can also run. My guess and the coach concurred, is that the U.S. has possibly the highest number of kids like this( great swimmers and runners) - way more than any other country - but for some reason this has not converted into a big pool of triathlon talent at the top.
For all the buzz about triathlon as an adult recreational hobby, looking at the sport from the perspective of a high school athlete who can run and swim, triathlon basically doesn’t exist. Rowing has bigger visiblity among high school swimmers as something to to after they “retire” at age 18 than triathlon does. Triathlon has even lower visability among track athletes.
Lots of swimmers and runners do take up triathlon but they do it at about age 30. What the sport needs is to get them involved at 17 or 18 when they are cycling out of high school sports and getting shut out of, or chosing ot to pursue college sport. IMHO the key is to get large numbers involved then develop champions out of that large pool. Waiting for the great ones to come to triathlon on their own is not going to work well consistantly.
I don’t know what the difference is. Is it because IM is so USA-centric? It’s big elsewhere, but so are ITU races.
Is it because of the lure of swimming or running in college? That probably has a lot to do with it. I think though that finding those not quite NCAA qualifiers is one of the better bets. Or finding someone at a DII, DIII school as opposed to looking at swim programs like Texas, Stanford, Auburn, Florida, etc. for the talent.
Or is it a lack of really developed kids tri-series? When I did Ironkids in 1989, it was fast and some really good kids did the race. I’m not saying it’s not ‘as fast’ now, but it isn’t as developed. The year I went to Nationals in 1989, Hunter won and went to the Olympics. Doug Friman was 9th and was a near Olympian 2x. I was 10th. Sean Gallegher was 2nd, and I believe swam in college, but that was about it. I think that Nick Radkewich and Sara Mclarty also came up through the Ironkids ranks. But, shortly thereafter, it seemed like the series died off a bit. Canada had ‘Kids of Steel’ at the time, is it still going?
Making Triathlon an NCAA sport would definitely promote it’s visibility and encourage top HS athletes to consider it in college. I know that a lot of college tri teams would also welcome the extra money and support from the university. Right now my team gets next to nothing from our campus recreation department, and most people on campus are surprised to find out that we even have a team, let alone one that has won individual and team titles at Collegiate Nationals. Every year we have to fund raise to pay for race entries and travel. Whatever we are short has to come directly out of our pockets. And let’s not even start talking about buying all of our own equipment… bike, wetsuits, etc. We really have a hard time finding top athletes given that we are competing for them against very generously funded NCAA track, cross country or swim teams.
On the flip side, there are advantages to NOT being NCAA. Most of our better athletes are former NCAA swimmers and runners who have run out of eligibility. It is nice to have somewhere to go and compete after the NCAA won’t let you any more.
Alan Webb: 8:42 total (3:55.3 mile; 4:47.00 500 free).
Here’s the link for the swim: Potomac Valley Senior Championships (1998)
When I saw this thread, I immediately thought Alan Webb. He graduated in 2001, so that would make him a freshman in 1998. I wonder if he was still swimming as a sophomore?
