The 2020 International Swimming League season begins tomorrow. The second season adds several more scoring wrinkles to an already-complex system. We’ve broken down the system as much as we can below for fans following this weekend’s season openers live.
Race Scoring
Day 1 Events
| Women’s Event # | Day 1 | Men’s Event # |
| 1 | 100 Fly | 2 |
| 3 | 200 Back | 4 |
| 5 | 200 Breast | 6 |
| 7 |
4×100 Free Relay
|
|
| —Break— | ||
| 9 | 50 Free | 8 |
| 11 | 200 IM | 10 |
| 13 | 50 Breast | 12 |
| 4×100 Free Relay | 14 | |
| —Break— | ||
| 15 | 50 Back | 16 |
| 17 | 400 Free | 18 |
| 19 | 4×100 Medley Relay* | 20 |
Day 2 Events
| Women’s Event # | Day 2 | Men’s Event # |
| 21 | 100 Free | 22 |
| 23 | 200 Fly | 24 |
| 25 | 100 Back | 26 |
| 27 | 100 IM | 28 |
| —Break— | ||
| 29 | 200 Free | 30 |
| 31 | 50 Fly | 32 |
| 33 | 100 Breast | 34 |
| 35 | 4×100 Mixed Free Relay | 35 |
| —Break— | ||
| 36 | 400 IM | 37 |
| 38 | 50m Skin Race* | 39 |
| 40 | 4×50 Mixed Medley (if tiebreak needed) | 40 |
*The winner of the women’s 4×100 medley relay gets to pick the stroke of the women’s skin race the next day. Same goes for the winner of the men’s 4×100 medley relay and the men’s skin race.
Each ISL meet includes 39 events, divided by several point-scoring formats:
Most Events
| Individual Event | Relay Event | |
| 1st | 9 | 18 |
| 2nd | 7 | 14 |
| 3rd | 6 | 12 |
| 4th | 5 | 10 |
| 5th | 4 | 8 |
| 6th | 3 | 6 |
| 7th | 2 | 4 |
| 8th | 1 | 2 |
| DNF or DQ | -2 | -4 |
| DNS | -4 | -8 |
Teams can lose points outright for failing to finish (DNF), taking a disqualification (DQ), or leaving a lane empty (did-not-start, or DNS).
Skin Races
The Skin race point system has changed from last year. Instead of triple-points determined by overall finish order, the new format scores each of the three rounds individually. Only the top four make it to round 2, and the top two from the second round move on to the final round.
The big change is that now, cruising to 4th in the opening round and 2nd in the second round would actually yield less points than winning all three rounds. In addition, the penalties for a DQ increase as rounds go on.
| Place | Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3 |
| 1st | 9 | 9 | 14 |
| 2nd | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| 3rd | 6 | 6 | |
| 4th | 5 | 5 | |
| 5th | 4 | — | |
| 6th | 3 | — | |
| 7th | 2 | — | |
| 8th | 1 | — | |
| DNF or DQ | -2 | -4 | -6 |
| DNS | -4 | -8 | -12 |
Jackpot Points
The biggest new wrinkle this year is jackpot times, which allows a swimmer who wins by a wide margin to steal points from the bottom-end finishers in the event.
If a swimmer beats any other swimmers by the jackpot time margins below, the winning swimmer steals the finish points of the other athlete.
Teams also steal jackpot points if another team takes a DQ, a DNS, or a DNF in a race.
| MEN | WOMEN | MIXED | |
| 50 free | 0.85 | 0.95 | |
| 100 free | 1.8 | 2.05 | |
| 200 free | 4 | 4.5 | |
| 400 free | 8.5 | 9.4 | |
| 50 back | 0.9 | 1.05 | |
| 100 back | 2 | 2.2 | |
| 200 back | 4.3 | 4.8 | |
| 50 breast | 1.05 | 1.15 | |
| 100 breast | 2.25 | 2.5 | |
| 200 breast | 5 | 5.4 | |
| 50 fly | 0.9 | 1.05 | |
| 100 fly | 2 | 2.2 | |
| 200 fly | 4.4 | 4.8 | |
| 100 IM | 2.05 | 2.3 | |
| 200 IM | 4.4 | 4.9 | |
| 400 IM | 9.4 | 10.4 | |
| 4×100 free relay | 9 | 10 | 10 |
| 4×100 medley relay | 10 | 11 |
Cutoff Time Penalties
In addition, the league will continue to use cut-off times, meaning athletes will lose points if they swim slower than a set time.
A swimmer failing to meet these times will have a one-point penalty, while a relay will have a two-point penalty. These penalties are assessed after finish points are determined – so a swimmer taking 8th but missing the cutoff time will earn one point for the 8th-place finish, then take the one-point penalty for a total of zero points.
If a swimmer misses the cutoff time and gets their points stolen by jackpot, the cutoff penalty remains, but the finish points get stolen. So an athlete taking 8th, missing the cutoff time and falling outside the jackpot margin would incur -1 point for their team, taking the cutoff penalty, but having their 8th-place finish point stolen by the jackpot swim.
| Distance | Men | Women | |
|
Freestyle
|
50 | 22.50 | 25.50 |
| 100 | 49.50 | 55.00 | |
| 200 | 1.49.50 | 1.58.50 | |
| 400 | 3.50,50 | 4.10.10 | |
|
Backstroke
|
50 | 25.00 | 28.50 |
| 100 | 54.00 | 1.00.50 | |
| 200 | 1.58.00 | 2.11.00 | |
|
Breaststroke
|
50 | 28.50 | 31.50 |
| 100 | 1.00.00 | 1.08.50 | |
| 200 | 2.12.00 | 2.28.50 | |
|
Butterfly
|
50 | 24.00 | 26.50 |
| 100 | 53.00 | 58.50 | |
| 200 | 1.59.50 | 2.12.00 | |
|
Individual Medley
|
100 | 55.00 | 1.02.50 |
| 200 | 2.01.00 | 2.13.50 | |
| 400 | 4.18.00 | 4.46.50 | |
| Freestyle Relay | 4*100 | 3.17.00 | 3.39.00 |
| Medley Relay | 4*100 | 3.35.00 | 4.02.00 |
| Mixed freestyle | 4*100 | 3.28.00 | |
Team Standings Points
At the end of the meet, each team earns season points for their finish:
| Team Finish |
Team Standings Points
|
| 1st | 4 |
| 2nd | 3 |
| 3rd | 2 |
| 4th | 1 |
The top 8 teams in standings points at the end of the season will make the semifinals, and the top two teams from each semifinal will make the season final.
The Jackpot system will ruin ISL.
The Jackpot system really confused me while watching yesterday. Had no idea what was going on there at first. But, since at least one coach said that the importance of those Jackpots took him by surprise and he’d have to reconsider his line ups as a result, I guess I wasn’t the only one trying to figure out what was going on.
JARED Good job! Thx from Sweden
Jackpot, Cutoff – getting a bit too complex for scoring and fans to follow
Seems odd that most the cutoff times are the same as 2019, but then a couple are different and the Women’s 400 free is WAAAAY off +30s. Do you think these are typos or actual intended differences?
Women’s 400 Free: 30.0s Slower
Men’s 50 Back: 1.0s Faster
Men’s 400 Medley 0.5s Faster
Women’s 100 back: 0.5s Faster
Men’s 400 IM: 1.0s Faster
I imagine when you don’t have to include the possibility of Katie ledecky sandbagging the 400 (not that she ever would anyway) the cutoff time goes down quite a bit? Unsure though.
There were only three swims last season in the 400 free which were slower than the standard of 4:10.00. The slowest swim was 4:12.88. The new cut off is 4:40.10, it feels more like a case of fat-fingering the 4 instead of the 1 on a number pad.
i think its a typo! the cutoff time is probably 4:10.10, in the results of day 1 swimmers who didn’t meet 4:10 got deducted
Something something Dressel
Should we expect world records or am I getting ahead of myself?
It’s always good to have high hopes.
It’s 2020. So, I assume that all World Records will be broken or none.
Yea dawg I think I’m not gonna care about points or teams and just watch the swimmers do their thing and hope for some great times.