I had something pretty interesting happen this past weekend at St. Anthony’s. I’m very excited about it now, but it could have turned out badly. I ended up swimming a 17:00 open water 1500. This is my fastest swim split in a tri and was good enough to have the fastest swim of the day (including the pros!). The problem was, since my time was 27 seconds faster than the nearest pro (Andy Potts), the race officials decided that I must have left in the wrong swim wave! They disqualified me from the race! I had to sort things out afterwards and explain that I did in fact swim that time. They fixed the mistake, but it seems a bit odd that they would simply disqualify me without looking into it. In effect, they disqualified me for swimming too fast, which is not a bad problem to have. The race officials were very cooperative and fixed the DQ when I explained that I’m a swimmer, but I’m wondering why it happened in the first place? Is there a rule that says an Age Grouper must swim/bike/run slower than the pros? Would someone running a 30 minute 10k be disqualified as well? I just thought I’d throw this out there, brag a bit, and see what people thought. For those who are curious, my final time was 1:56.38 which means I still need to work on my running and biking if I want to compete with the pros. Nice job to everyone at the race, it was a great time! The Mad Dogs are great people!
congrats on the great swim. My feelings wouldn’t be hurt a bit if that happend to me, however they’d be right about DQing me.
For a 17 minute swim in my case I’d either have to had left waaaay early (like three waves early) or used a tug boat. Damn that’s fast!!
Hmm, odd, you’d think they would have contacted you first to confirm before putting the DQ mark by your name. Perhaps they did try this and couldn’t get a hold of you. Perhaps they were getting complaints from other competitors who said there was no way you swam that fast. It sounds like it worked out in the end with little hassle, so I’d just say you’ve got yourself a good story to tell others!
Chris
That’s pretty funny. I’m sure Andy doesn’t get beat by age groupers very often so they were probably caught a bit off guard.
This obviously sets a good precedent for the next time your time is questioned.
nice race!
To be fair, the pros were not allowed to wear wetsuits. I had a sleeveless suit on, but I also had a good bit of traffic to swim through… Hopefully those two factors cancel out.
thanks for sharing this… i noticed your swim split in the 25-29 age group (you beat “andy potts” by 27 seconds) and must admit, i flipped in disbelief. work on that run, and your going to rock. i noticed you coach. do you have any history of coaching swimmers who have achieved a 19min or less for 1500 open water? whats your swim background? thanks…
cool! nice swim time 
The suit is worth a few seconds per hundred meters, probably, but still…that’s pretty damed fast.
Wow. Nice swim!
If it were me (not in a million years), I would have let the DQ stand, printed a copy of the results, framed it, and hung it on the wall next to the speeding ticket I (haven’t) received while riding my bike.
Congratulations on an outstanding swim. I am glad that the offcials came to their senses. Extraordinarily fast times, by age-group athletes( or anyone for that matter) can be a red flag for the possibility that, someone has cut the course, or that some sort of other hanky-panky was/is going on. There was a guy who for a couple of years was out-witting the folks at both IMNA and Sports Stats Timing at various Im races. He even managed to bag a spot to IMH two years ago at Lake Placid before he was finally caught last year at IMC. He had some form of sophisticated arrangment to get around the bike course in a very fast time( sub 5:30) while still crossing all the timing mats, so that it looked like he was doing the whole distance. I recall seeing him come in at IMC off the bike and I saying to someone that something seems a bit amiss. Now, I don’t want to stereotype here, so I will apologize ahead of time, but a large black man typically, does not lead the age-groupers off the bike in an IM race. I think what happened was that he miss-calculated his time out on the bike and came back into town too early. Had he waited another 30 - 60 minutes and he would have been more under-cover amidst the masses of other age-groupers. I believe that he has been banned from IMNA and WTC races for life.
Fleck
My swimming isn’t so good, so I often tell the people I accidentally started in a later wave with the 80+ year old competitors even though my timer started with the 25-29’s. Whatever lifts the ol’ ego!
At IMCDA, I beleive the first year, a gentleman named Weston out of Missula, came out in front of the pro’s. They tried to make him swim a third lap.
Out of curiosity, I looked it up. Looks like you referring to Eulorge Melane. IMC last year he went 1:28 in the swim, 4:13 in the bike (1st overall!), and 5:00 in the run. Did the same thing in IM NZ. I guess if he came from a bike background, it might be possible, but I definitely would have suspected him even at sub 5:00 on the bike! Guess it goes to show that there’ll always be someone that tries to cheat the system which is why the RD does have to take extremely fast splits under suspicion.
Chris
Congratulations on a outstanding swim in less than ideal conditions.
However to be honest I would be suspicious about an unbelievable time like yours,too.
I am glad everything is sorted out.
Now give us some bacground on your swimming.
Dude… I caught up to him and passed him about 2miles into the run. I had been getting updates that I was 2nd age-grouper all day, and then all of a sudden I was 3rd. Even only seeing him for a few seconds as I caught and passed him, I knew he shouldn’t be there. It was funny though, I was receiving updates from buddies that said he was looking around all confused like he’d really screwed up !! Funny !
I’m glad to hear he’s been disqualified for life. The funny thing I heard awhile ago was that he is an RD himself !!
Trev
Check Section 10.7.3 (i).
No age group swimmer is allowed to beat the best time of all pro swimmers in a Regional Event, as defined above, when said pro swimmers have a seperate swim wave. Any swimmer recording a faster time is subject to automatic disqualification, subject to race official discretion.
Looks like you got away with one.
some people make you wonder what is going on in their little heads.
I sure hope that section doesn’t exist in the Canadian Triathlon rules. Please say you made that section up otherwise I’m going to have to check.
There was an incedent last year at the Santa Barbara triathlon where they DQ’ed the first place woman, becuase she had the fastest run split of the day, beating the men pros. It was Erika Akulfi, and she did in fact have the fastest split, and like you had to sort it out at the awards cermony where she was not called up. Your situation is rare, and most of the time it is someone cutting the course, or just getting lost, so it is understandable that they might think something fishy was going on.
As for the time difference to the pros, the wetsuit makes a huge difference. For a guy like Potts it is probably 4 or 5 seconds a hundred, so the difference is not as much as most would think. If you do the math, you see that the pros did in fact swim faster, but race directors are often numerically challenged, and they don’t see the big picture when doing their comparisions. Get your run down there and maybe you can go head to head with those guys someday…Good job…
These are the USAT rules. If you read further, they also disallow such a competitor from wearing a wetsuit in future events for one year.
I don’t know if there is reciprocity with the Canadian federation, so you might be in the clear there.