AQuA Finals Festival

Entry for the Finals Festival is included with your Swimming and/or Water Polo registration.

*Entry for the Skins events are by invitation.

Staggered Start Race Instructions

In a Staggered Start Race , the swimmers are “equalised” by commencing their start at different time intervals based on entry times submitted for a determined style and distance. It would be anticipated that if each swimmer swam to their submitted time (or swam to their “handicap”) that all swimmers in that race would arrive at the finishing line at the same time.

In practice the SLOWEST swimmer, based on their submitted time, starts FIRST at the command “GO”. The other swimmers leave the starting platform when their STAGGER NUMBER is called, until the last swimmer who has the FASTEST submitted time, has their starting number called and they commences the race.

The Starter gives the usual command “Take Your Marks” and when the Starter sounds the starting device, all swimmers on GO will commence their race, all other swimmers will wait until the Check Starter calls out their relevant stagger for them to start their race. You will hear the Check Starter count out “one, two, three, four, five, etc, whilst walking behind the swimmers, continuing the counting until the highest number in that race is called out.

There are no False Start recalls in Staggered Start races, unless there is a malfunction in the timing system being used. Any swimmer starting before their handicap number will be disqualified unless they redeem themselves by returning to the place of starting and commence again after their starting number is called, if time permits this can be climbing out and wait for the correct handicap or if there is not much time spare, come back touch the wall and then push off and re-continue your race.

The winner is the swimmer that is closest to their entry time without being faster than their entry time.

Winners of each heat will progress to the final. If there are more than 8 heats the 8 winners closest to their time will progress to the final. If there are less than 8 heats the winners and then the next closest swimmers will progress.

Timekeeping

In Staggered Start races, all the Timekeepers start their watches on the signal of the start “Go!”

Each Timekeeper will stop their watch the instant any part of the body of the swimmer in their lane makes contact with the finishing wall.

Skins Rules

A SKINS event is an exciting series of back-to-back races which operate on a knockout basis, with the two remaining swimmers racing each other in a head-to-head final race.

The AQuA Meet Director will invite 8 people to compete in Men’s and Women’s races based on their performances at the AQUA Swimming Championships.

A stroke is drawn out of a hat and the first 8 swimmers race 50m of that stroke and the 2 last swimmers are out. Then it goes back to the 6 swimmers for another race and so it goes on……..until there are 2 swimmers left for a head to head race, the winner of the last race is the overall winner. The last eliminated swimmer of each race picks the next stroke randomly out of a hat.

Races are run consecutively so there is little time to rest and what makes it interesting is you cannot call the outcome as it is rare for any one swimmer to be great at all 4 strokes.