The Virginia Cavaliers’ 400 medley relay from Friday night that broke two new School Records has been disqualified for swimming in the wrong lane.
Initial results from the meet were confusing as the names on Virginia’s A and B relays were backwards. While these sorts of errors, the disdain of swimming journalists everywhere, are fairly common on live results, it is usually simply changes on relay cards not being updated in results programs until after-the-fact.
In this case, though, apparently it was instead the relays actually swimming in the wrong lanes, as the results from the meet have been updated to list Virginia’s relay as being disqualified for a “swimmer finishing in the wrong lane.” Virginia’s coaches confirmed that this was the reason for the DQ on Saturday.
That means that the A relay’s 3:32.07 that was an automatic qualifying time is off the books, as is Courtney Bartholomew’s Automatic Qualifying Time and School Record of 50.80 on the lead-off leg.
Bartholomew will have no concern about qualifying for NCAA’s; after all, she put in another automatic qualifier on Saturday morning in the prelims with a 51.01, which means she’ll still break Mei Christensen’s UVA and ACC Records of 51.58 in that race (and will probably lower it again in finals).
(Note: we’ve sought clarification from the NCAA on whether or not Bartholomew’s lead-off leg will stand. NCAA rules allow lead-off legs to stand if that swimmer finishes legally, and another is disqualified, but is not specific on this situation as to who, precisely, has or has not finished their swim legally).
The bigger issue for the Cavaliers involves the qualification of their 400 medley relay for the NCAA Championship meet. In the Arizona program, where new Virginia head coach Augie Busch has spent most of the career working under his father, they counted on the mid-season invite for a vast majority of their NCAA qualifying times, and then largely train through ACC’s. It’s very possible that the Cavaliers could hit the A qualifying time again (3:34.65) at ACC’s even without a full rest, or that they will at least hit the B standard (3:36.46) and have all of the swimmers qualified anyway in the 200 medley relay, and would be moot aside for seeding purposes.
Regardless, for those curious as to why these results may not be showing up in the official times database come Monday morning, this is what has happened.
It will be OK – they have more good stuff where this came from. Wahooooooooowa!