After the news of some mysterious illness that has ravaged the NCAA Men’s swimming meet, specifically Stanford, Texas, and Arizona, the NCAA has decided to postpone the meet until Friday in a coach’s meeting that was organized at the last minute.
There were also proposals of having timed finals, but after heated discussion, it was decided that the best solution was to postpone the meet until noon (Eastern) on Friday. We still don’t know what the illness is, but the CDC won’t allow any of the sick swimmers into the facility until Friday.
More details as they become available. What do you think, how much will 1 day affect the taper? We asked some coaches about what they thought, check out the discussion.
Update: We’ve now learned that the reason the meet had to be postponed is by mandate from the CDC as well. Some of the sick swimmers were in the pool today, and were supposed to be isolated for 24 hours, so the CDC said they had to put it off until Friday. Guess that puts to rest about any conspiracy theories regarding favoritism!
I definitely think this was the right decision for the situation! For what it’s worth, those sick kids aren’t going to benefit from being out of the water (just like those kids that aren’t sick) aren’t going to benefit to a glitch in their taper system – just a humble coach’s opinion.
I don’t think they delayed it because these happen to be three of the top six teams in the NCAA. It’s the sheer number of swimmers that are sick. If half of the swimmers from three inconsequential teams were sick, it may be a different story, simply because half would mean three instead of nine!
David, I tend to agree with you. I was just trying to see if I could stir up some conspiracy theories. In addition, if it’s the CDC’s decision to not let them swim, even when it’s not clear whether they’re contagious or not, they have to postpone it. It wouldn’t be fair for them to say “well, we feel well enough to swim” and then have an outside body like the CDC say that they couldn’t.
Think it’s probably the right call in this specific situation.