There’s actually an “Honest Effort” rule in the NCAA Swimming & Diving rulebook that states: “Coaches are to ensure student-athletes put forth an honest effort in all competitions. Failure to show an honest effort could be considered an act of improper conduct (Rule 2-5-6) and result in disqualification and/or disciplinary action by the referee or meet committee.” This is why Kacper likely went :48 and not 1:08…good luck defining what an “honest effort” is as a ref 🥶

completely floating through a 100 fly and still going 48 is nuts lol

I was at the meet and actually DID NOT EVEN NOTICE Kacper dogging the 100 fly final. Granted I was across the pool over lane 1 with the Cal contingent. BTW that is the easiest 48+ fly I've ever seen on video.

This swim made the gigachad performance by Brendan Burns even better tbh. Kacper: *chill 100 fly to conserve for 100 back* Brendan: *maxes both and wins both races in PB or near PB fashion*

absolutely shit on my 100 fly PB while sandbagging

I agree it was the smart thing to do on Kacper's part. That being said, it feels good to know that the kid who gave it everything both races came out on top.

the dodging of having to explain how people quality for NCAAs was elite 🤣

I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed this! I was so confused, thanks for explaining Kyle. I thought he hurt himself before the race or something. Also that was the worst technique 48 low 100 fly I’ve ever seen! Shows that these guys are on a different level to be throwing down times that wouldn’t get last in a D3 final without even getting his feet above the surface of the water in the recovery portion!

Similar things happen more often in track all the time. College and high school have a lot of triangles and unless the teams are DI or large schools, there won't be enough competitors to fill all the times/places. I've throw shot to get last place of six or seven before running over to help a relay team win. Some guys did the same with jumps.

This is the first video about swimming in over 18 months that is not about trans athletes destroying the sport in some way. Thank you for this.

Nice job, including the express lane cruise through qualifying times... From a team/points perspective, it makes perfect sense... and is actually a smart decision. As far as "honest effort" goes, the vast majority of prelim swims are swum below 100% effort. What constitutes honest in this case??? Really enjoy your vids!!!!!

I remember watching the olympic games some years ago. There was a similar situation at track and field where 2 german sprinters started at 100 m dash, but dropped out of the race immediatly after the start because they knew they wouldn't get far in the individual competition, but they might have a chance in relay and decided to save strength for that. They had to start the race because they already commited to that, but obviously there was no rule in place saying that you can't just drop out of the competition right away.

Brilliant move! Love seeing the strategic side of swimming come out!

As a guy from a high school that wasn’t the fastest but we had depth, we’ve won state for 4 years now simply because of the volume we had in finals

Thanks for this. I saw the prelim/final times and was baffled. And imagine swimming a leisurely 48 100 fly. In my dreams.

I have a niece that does the butterfly. I can't tell you how many occasions the times are so close where the difference is essentially 0.01 seconds that going into a heat in an A or B final can be very strategic if another race is expected on the same day. She finished 25th and 15th in the last Olympics.

Editing I know might take you more effort but it was so good in this video and really elevates good job you Kyle 🔥

Any time you have results determined over multiple competitions, it is the fault of the rules if someone is incentivized to sandbag at any point in time. It's like the time the olympic badminton several teams got dq'd for trying to manipulate seeding by throwing matches (in some cases both teams in one match) or the time one soccer team had to prevent the other team from scoring on either goal to advance in the tournament, both are in the end the fault of the ruleset for not having winning each match by standard means be the most beneficial thing (although tbf in the badminton one throwing was punishable by dq so they did disincentivize it in a way).

I think these tactics have been around for a long time…my competition days are long gone, but I can remember all sorts of tactics being used to gather as many points as possible!

Just happened to see this. Always cool to see someone I used to swim with still involved in the sport!

Great explanation. Great swim plan by the team

I think that was the most effortless 48.2 I have ever seen... I haven't done the exact same thing before, but something similar, had 100 free and 100 breast almost back to back so I decided to just swim the 100 free not give all my energy into it (I still ended up dropping a second bc it was a month old time) but I ended up qualifying 1st in the constellation final to maximize the points for my team

I was DQ'd in 400IM securing 8th place points, for this very thing, but it was overturned. My coach & I were not aware of this objective rule at the time in '92. Since I was clearly coasting (to save up for my best event later, and not likely to score much more in the IM), the DQ was deserved, and we were lucky to reverse it.

Thanks for the explanation, all makes sense now.

Something similar happened to me lol. In high school I was at a big invitational that was boys only. I got 8th in the 100 fly by less than a tenth of a second. The hext closest guy was 3 seconds agead of me. I was at 3rd for the 500 narrowly. The only thing inbetween the Fly and 500 were 100 frees. Also, we didn’t have a B final for the 500. I would get 2 minutes of rest. I gained 3 seconds in my 100 fly to make it look like I was somewhat trying. Then I did my 500 where I suprisingly only gained a second.

Having competed in track in high school and college and now as a bicycle racer in my 70s. I will say strategy is extremely important. The best strategy gets the best overall results.

I knew something like this was happening. Smart play my Kacper

My coach use to talk about how training levels up your easy swimming more than your fast swimming and how really great swimmers easy swim is very close to their full speed. Never seen better evidence than this

Reminds me of China badminton in the Olympics… teams were intentionally performing bad to be seeded differently. This case is a little different as it isn’t 1v1 competition… I feel it is a little against spirit of competition.

This is a great breakdown

I had the exact same thought process as you did as soon as I saw people debating this. The meet is a team project, not an individual one. stokowski was the one dude from nc state who had a shot of going as fast as he did in the 100 back, so why not have him "sandbag," especially when you have multiple guys in the 100 fly final anyway?

Great idea. Swimming is a team sport, whether most people view it that way or not, rule 2-5-6 or not. It's about getting your team to win. One way to do that is to swim your best. A better way is to swim hard when you need to get the most amount of points. Could you imagine ejecting a wide receiver for not running 100% when they know a run play is coming? Better yet, can you imagine DQing a top tier swimmer for cruising prelims to save energy for finals? You can't and you wouldn't.

my roommate is Polish and knows of Kasper. he says that back home he would have scratched instead of doing a double. but because of the level of NCAA he probably was pushed to complete the double and get points.

I know their is a rule at some meets that if you don't hit the qualifying time for the meet, you can't score points.

100% agree, if there’s not a rule it’s the right thing to do. Tanking is bad, but this isn’t tanking. The literal goal is to try and win in the long run. It’d be like getting mad at a QB for kneeling in the last 2 mins

When strategy is an element of the game, you definitely have to play strategy. Nice analysis and good game play

flip side of this and we actually have seen it at NC High School State championships (South Mecklenburg 2014-2015 season didn't win a single event). Sandbagging finals to optimize more points for later events where you know you have a better chance at more points like you said at the end. Sometimes is better to have all your guys swim lights out in the morning to get into A final and just score points

Nice point of view from the pro👍

Fantastic video

This is the same as NBA playoffs, when a game is already a lock by the 4th quarter, teams will sub in their benchwarmers to close out the game to rest/avoid injury to their better players. Is that "cheating"? "Oh no, it's not fair that your team got extra rest because of the score difference!" But the score difference is exactly what allowed for that extra rest to occur. So in this case, making it to the A final is what allowed the guy to bank the guaranteed points. He already put in the effort to get to the A final, that's his due reward. If you don't want this behavior, then alter the rules so only one event per day, or different scoring system. But as it stands, this is what the system encourages, so that's what you get.

A similar situation happened in the Olympics 1988 where the German B-Finalist swam Olympic record in 400m freestyle.

Swims easy and still goes 48...lol

These are people who know how their sport works… very strategic! Work smarter not harder they say

The strategy makes sense only if swimming a legitimate time in the fly, Kasper would have absolutely ruined his chances of winning the backstroke. It's kind of a "loser" mentality or a "scarcity" mentality otherwise. Clearly Burns wasn't affected by his strong effort in the B group final. At that level, they should be able to recover during the same day. Training is a whole lot harder than swimming two finals in a day. And training would have prepared them for that recovery. I doubt he saved much energy from the time he did vs the time he could have done. The other reason it might back fire is that you introduce a mentality of not going balls to the wall. Not going for it in the fly final could have had the reverse effect in the back stroke. But I guess only the swimmer and his coach knows. I have a son who's a competitive athlete who would never contemplate doing that. One speed, all you got.

It was dumb logic. The energy savings “very little” vs picking up bad habits for the next race. Hence 2nd place when it matters. Lessons learned. Always do your best.

Kyle - You asked a good question when you raised it at the start of a race and I would encourage you to ask it again from swimming trainers. In high school and college I was a swimmer and I always went through that ritual of (1) arms overhead stretching (2) arms parallel to ground extended and moving while rotating body. I don't know the answer medically speaking but i would guess that it has to do with warming up muscles tissue and just general stretching before the intense strain that will occur once you leave the starting block. Competition for me was a long time ago and I might just have been told by trainers/coaches and just don't recall and i might have just performed the stretch just before standing onto the blocks because every swimmer I saw did it. As an adult I coached youth soccer and my training told me warming up prior to increasing exertion on muscles and joints reduced likelihood of injury from stress during an active practice or in a game. So perhaps the same logic I was taught for coaching youth soccer would apply to collegiate swimming. Good question to keep asking.

Many, many years ago, when I was running track, I was coming off an injury and made finals in two events. I didn't have much of a shot at winning the first event, as it wasn't my strongest event, but I was expected to do well in the second event. After getting off the blocks in the first event, I realized that I wasn't feeling it, and kind of coasted the rest of the way, with the thought that I didn't want to reinjure myself in an event I wouldn't win anyway. Fast forward a couple of hours, and I ended up not finishing the second event because I really did reinjure myself. It was definitely my most disappointing track meet.

It was the right strategy and the right thing to do by his team

1+1 = Kyle Sockwell carry the 1 Math always checks out

UMN was one of my favorite pools to swim in. Great video, meet scoring strategy rarely gets discussion but we always had running score sheets (mental or IRL) tracking how our expected performances had to shake out to maximize our standing.

This is the first time ive watched anything about competitive swimming but this shits fire imm watch a bit more

Absolutely agree that save it for your best race…… don’t forget it’s a 400 IM so think of it as part of the warm up ⬆️

I completely agree. The way the rules are set, this was an extremely smart thing for the team to do. Now do I think that someone should be swimming slowly in the finals of the ncaa championship? No. The rule could change to 1-12 points for the lower final and 8-20 for the upper to help disincentivize this.

You are absolutely right. Stupid rules make stupid meets. The rules should encourage top competition. I don't know how to do that. But there are surely better minds than mine out there.

his 48:27 looks like me going 1:10🤣

Losing on purpose is always okay. If you don't like the result of having certain rules, change the rules to make sure that losing on purpose has no advantages.

Back in the day (90s) we would do exact same thing

As soon as you introduce team points, you change the game from a plain time trial to a team points meta game. As a result you introduce an element of strategy. Who swims what races, what days are each race on, how many can each swimmer handle? You balance all of the different factors to optimize for team points. For that reason, I'd equate dogging a race like this to dogging a point in tennis. It's one singular opportunity to score points, it's not the whole competition. It's not some crisis of sportsmanship. Saving energy for a later part of the competition is also very analogous to any other racing sport where pacing and saving energy are core strategic elements. Nobody complains about speed skaters on longer distances starting out as slow as humanly possible to save energy for one big last sprint. But it's the same thing he did here. Strategically drop behind to set yourself up to catchup and overtake the competition later. Long story short I see no issue with what he did and I think they should take it a step further. Give swimmers the option to sit out a heat and take the last place points. If your strategy involves conserving energy like that there's no need to force you to go through the motions. Nobody is fooled by it. You qualified for the group that means you earned those points already. If you wanna take em and run, go for it.

In a high school meet, my coach for some reason gave me back to back events. I got up from my 100 free style and immediately heard my name again for a 100 butterfly. Couldn't even get out of the pool at first and had to wait after the next swimmer dived in. After I got up, I heard my name again for a 4x100 relay. I don't think I've been more tired ever.

Damn they're under water for 3/4 of the pool, that's wild. they only get 5-6 strokes off before they have to do their flip turn.

I did exactly this in college swimming Conference Championship.

what website is this?

You play the numbers sometimes even if it don't seem right, to win. I say, great coaching.

Absolutely a great strategy. He got the points. You see this in all types of races. At the end of the day the championship is about points. No shame in using that to your advantage.

The NCAA rule is ridiculous. The two heats' times should be added together to eliminate slacking off.

This a and B grouping is what confuses me. Could a B group swimmer end up swimming faster than someone in the A group? If so, why would he (or she?) get fewer points? Does this set the stage for these oddities where a swimmer does not swim hard?

Amazing

It's less then what teams do in Cycling and Car racing, where they more then throw the race, they literally help the designated teammate to win by drafting and blocking.

happens all the time in track heats/semi-finals, easing up well before the line.

"I don’t know how you'd stop this from happening" By changing the point scoring system, obviously. Have the finals in two heats with final times (across both heats) determining ranking. Simple.

On way to try to avoid it is to only allow the swimmer to score if they 9:15 swim under the qualifying time! Don’t solve all problems as in some case that still too slow.

YeeeeeeHAW! 🤠( Low key I subscribed for that😅)

So how did he do in the backstroke?

from a purely technical standpoint it was absolutely the right move, but from a sportsmanship standpoint it might hurt some fee fees

It is called strategy.

Is this video having multiple loading issues for anyone else? All my other videos are working and i've come back to this one like 5 times it seems cursed in about 3 different spots and every other part will play but those.

As a Brazilian, didn't expected the Nazaré meme appearing here lmao

the same in track and field where you don't go all out in the semifinals

Reminds me of badminton teams purposely messing up service multiple times disqualified for not in spirit of sport, and disappointed audience and sponsors.

He knew he couldn't win the butterfly but thought he had a chance at the backstroke. So, yeah, save your energy and go for #1. He almost got it too... If he'd have swan all out in the fly he might have only gotten 3rd or 4th in the backstroke.

Thought you were initially talking about NU’s federico burdisso because I’m aware that he didn’t take SC seriously and don’t try at nationals

Yo Kyle you should make a vid about tech suits?

I know nothing about swimming. I am Acdc bad. I truly understand. I even understood before you finished. Why has it not been done before?

Here's another thing. Swimmer swims so slow that the rest of the field starts congratulating each other and "crosses lanes" earning DQ's. Theoretically, the slow swimmer could "Steven Bradbury" all the other swimmers and become the winner.

Hell yea this is allowed! So cool.

There is a rule in place; re that Northwestern women’s swimmer a few years ago…can’t remember if it was b1gs or nc’s, but it seems that it’s up to the official’s discretion

i thought this was a jomboy segment.... nice one.

Meet organizers: Okay, this is how you get points, team with the most points wins. Swim teams: Behave in extremely predictable way get the most points they can Organizers: Actually that's illegal. If they want *times* to always be competitive then tie the points to their relative *times* not their placements. First gets 100 points and say second place came in .25 after they get 75 points third came in .33 later so they get 67 seventh was .89 behind so they get 11 points, and eighth was conserving energy and came in 2.5s behind so they get 0 points. Should also get rid of the qualify/finals and just swim 2 heats and rank based on overall times, always hate how people winning the consolation final get fewer points than all the people they swam faster than in the final. It makes no sense to evaluate them separately. As is the qualifier system literally incentivizes ALL swimmers to always conserve energy in any race that isn't a final because the actual time doesn't matter. They have to know this, like how does nearly every single meet times get faster from qualifying to prelims, seems like there's a LOT of people not putting in an "honest effort" every single meet.

plying the gam is part of the game.

Gotta quibble a bit here with the use of the term sandbagging, which is deliberately underperforming in order to be placed in a less rigorous/skilled category. Kacper wouldn't have made the A final swimming any less than his best. Coaches are always looking to maximize scoring opportunities, and one of the bottom three seeded NC State guys was likely to place 8th, yeah, that gave Kacper a job to do. Also, 5th place NC State (373.5) had to score in the pool because individual points from diving were ZERO. They killed 4th place Indiana (379) in the pool, while IU scored 104 (!!) off the boards. They were 10.5 shy of 3rd place Texas who scored 44 flying through the air. NOTE: Cal scored 3 from diving, ASU 0. Marchand led all with 60 (of Cal's 483) pts. If he slips on the deck and breaks an arm, losing that plus lost relay points, they're 4th or 5th?

Ego. It can be a blessing, or a curse.

At a much smaller scale I threw my 500 free at state finals because I was sick, not sick enough to miss states but sick enough where if i put any level of real effort into the 500 then our relays would have done way worse, so since i was seeded 9th my coach let me dog it and get 10th.

similar situations happen in track.

Actually there's one more thing to consider. Who would have a problem with it? Who would be knocked back or out? I mean he landed pretty much where he was seeded so any unfair advantage would have been one he was already deemed to have. And a better butterfly time wouldn't have helped or hurt him or anyone else.

At first I was shocked at those times. Until I realized they are swimming 100 *yards.* Still wicked fast, but understandable.

crazy

It's called strategy, played chess while the others played checkers.

Does this happen in Track and Field?

'Swimmy'...😁

Now I just wonder what Stokowski could have went if he had no dogged the 100 fly, and rather full sent it like Burns did. Would it have got his adrenaline pumping and he would’ve won the event?