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Why no 1500m in the Masters & Senior British Champs?

Over the last week I’ve been asked by a few people (on the Community page) why the 1500m has been taken out of the British Masters Championships in June and so I wanted to make sure everyone understood this very difficult decision, writes Masters Officer Sharon Lock.

This meet is getting more popular each year which is fantastic. It shows Masters want to participate in this type of event.

Unfortunately the downside of this is that all of the events cannot be fitted into a three-day programme in an eight lane pool without the quality of the event being affected.

Last year there were complaints about the length of the evening sessions and officials were on the poolside far longer than they should have been.

Therefore a compromise needed to be made and this falls to the British Masters Technical Committee to decide. This is a voluntary group made up of Masters Representatives from England, Wales and Scotland who meet specifically to look after all of the issues that affect British Masters.

Lots of options were discussed with various pros and cons drawn out:

Every option was going to cause difficulties and there did not appear to be a solution that would please everyone.

Therefore, in the interests of fairness to all, trying to maintain the quality of the meet and finding the most cost effective option, it was decided to take the 1500m out of the event and hold it separately.

It was hoped this would allow more people the opportunity to enter as it would have no impact on their others swims.

Unfortunately, in the current economic climate, it hasn’t been possible to secure the additional funding needed to guarantee this happening in 2015.

However, we have been lucky enough to add the 1500m into the ASA Open Water Masters for 2015 and will be looking at the situation carefully in future.

The British Masters Technical Committees recommendation for 2016 and beyond is that this competition can no longer be held in an eight lane pool.

This will have consequences in future as there are only 10 50m x 10 lane pools in Britain and not all have the facilities needed to host this type of event.

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