What Is Challenge Swimming?
Challenge Swimming is an exciting format for swimming competition that provides answers to some of the major issues of concern about traditional swimming competition. The format has great flexibility for interesting characteristics that gives competition excitement and variety.
Challenge Swimming has three basic classes of competition: singles, doubles and team. In singles, the competition is between two individuals. Doubles involved competition between two sides, with each side being a partnership of two swimmers. Team competition is somewhat dependent upon the swimming pool configuration. A typical competition pool has eight lanes; therefore, we have two sides of four swimmers each. One of the most popular adaptations to this is to have four starters on each side, and one additional swimmer for substitution; however, many additional combinations can be used in a competition.
The competition involves each competitor swimming all of the 14 events. Once the competition starts, the events are swum on a regular time interval over approximately one hour (see attachments for event, order and start intervals). Points are awarded for each event, and the swimming match winner is determined by total points over the entire 14 event program
Why is Challenge Swimming is better that traditional swimming competition?
Challenge Swimming offers improvements in several different areas including: fan appeal, society obsession with “winning,” favorable format to accommodate staging execution for television and multi-media broadcasting, meaningful team size for pro teams, regional and national league development, and the creation of a special events for the local, national and international swimming club community.
One of the big drawbacks for swimming FANS in traditional swimming formats is the limited performances of top stars during any one staging session. For example, fans do not want to pay top dollar for admission, travel to a venue, go through parking, participate in concessions and find seats, only to see a top level super star, like Michael Phelps or Ryan Lochte, parade onto the deck, swim one great race, and then wave to crowd and leave. This would be like seeing Eli Manning go into a football game, play one series and then that is it for the night—as one sportswriter said, “That is called pre-season.” In Challenge Swimming, the top competitors are laying it on the line every event, for 14 events. It is a tremendous challenge to strength, skill, endurance, determination, tolerance to pain and psychological set-backs, and the will to win!
In swimming, FANS have a hard time identifying the swimmers during the race. In traditional swimming team competition, lanes placement is done my alternating swimmers from each team across the pool. In Challenge Swimming, swimmers swim in the same lane for all 14 events. In doubles and team competition, one team swims on one side of the pool, while the other team swims on the other side of the pool—for example: Team 1 in lanes 1, 2, 3 and 4; and Team 2 in lanes 5, 6, 7, 8. This allows the fans to be able to easily identify any individual or team by pool location. As a race progresses the fan can easily see if their favor individual or team is winning or losing, resulting in a great deal more competition excitement!
Modern Society is Obsessed with Winning and Losing!
At the end of the competition, there is no 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. At the end, there is a winner and there is a loser! In a majority of situations, modern society also loves team competition, over individual competition. Points for places in team events are award as to make every competitor very important to the final outcome, with only single point differential-8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1. Challenge Swimming offers both winning/losing and team competition for a larger fan base.
Challenge Swimming is perfect for TELEVISION! With a detailed, structured timeline, events are staged with known times and intervals for television and multi-media broadcast. This accommodates structured ad commercial times throughout the event timeline. The actual swimming events are approximately 1 hour long. With opening and closing presentations and commercials, the event time is approximately 1 ½ hours long. There is a high probability of developing pay-for-view events; not only within countries, but especially between nations with national teams. At the present time, Challenge Swimming–USA vs. Japan on a pay-per-view would be a sensation success at the box office. It could match the fantastic gross incomes of boxing pay-for-view!
Major League Pro Swimming
We see the Challenge Swimming Format as being the bases for Major League Pro Swimming with American and National Conferences. With all due respect, the American Sports Fan does not care about Santa Clara, Ft. Lauderdale, Tulsa, Durham, or Mission Viejo. They want to see competition between major league type towns: New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Seattle, Phoenix, etc. As a newspaper reporter said to me, “Why does Swimming think they can be successful in American Society by ignoring the organization and structure of every popular and successful team sport in our American Society.” Football, Basketball, Baseball, Ice Hockey, Soccer and others are organized on a major city bases. Challenge Swimming can facilitate this type of organization for swimming!
Base of Support
Challenge Swimming has the potential for tremendous, built-in support. The swimming club system in the United State, and around the world, offers a ready made base of support. The quality involvement of age group through master adult swimmers will embrace the exciting competition and match-ups that Challenge Swimming will bring to our sport! Jr. Elite competition (18 and under) will be enhanced with Challenge Swimming. For example, team competition between Northern California and Southern California. The format is exciting for high school and college swimming. For example: CAL vs. Stanford. There is even a short “sprint version” for age group swimmers.