London's Calling

Taking the analysis of the FINA points a bit further than I did yesterday I've looked at the projection of standards through to 2012. It's an interesting examination ... well, interesting if you're a nerd about these things.


Remember FINA points are calculated using the all-time top 10 performances, one per swimmer, at the end of each Olympic year. Currently we're using FINA2004 points. Tracking the all-time top 10 every four years back to 1988 (Seoul Olympics) we see two interesting facts:

• Relative to the 2004 standard the men were somewhat behind in 1988 (932 points opposed to 947 for the women) but have closed the gap so both genders are level at 1014 points in 2007. This phenomena is probably a direct result of the DDR women's performances during the 1970's and 1980's which artificially boosted the top-10 standards at that time. Fascinating that the women's improvements have been linear since that period albeit at a slightly slower rate than the men's.
  
• The improvement is basically linear across the twenty years, irrespective of rule changes for underwater work and backstroke turns or the introduction of racing suits in 2000 and their updates in 2004 (2008 performances with yet another update are not factored in here yet).

Projecting through to 2012 we get the 1,000 point score after the London Olympics equivalent to the current 1,035 point standard for the men and 1,031 for the women. One point approximates to 0.01 seconds per 50m so the difference between men and women is negligible.

Using the 2004 tables we can predict the time for each event at the various levels used by SNZ. Although a 30+ point increase in standards may sound scary to some it is, in fact a mere 1.15% improvement for men and 1.02% for women, in-line with the tracked improvement across the last 20+ years.