Arrogant US soccer fans--another soccer post

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by SteelBlue

Woah there, I don't remember saying he was a national type talent. Only that he's become a very athletic kid and I give the props to swimming. One thing that I think Mike doesn't realize is how the time standards work in swimming. Yes, you could walk into a small meet and find a lot of kids with very little talent and dominate. But at the end of the day your winning times will correspond to a national standard and will garner respect only if they exceed a certain standard.

As you said Arch, talent does rise quickly and I agree with that. I've learned over the past couple of years that there's swimming and then there's swimming. But when you start getting into those final heats there is a lot of talent in States like California, Texas, Florida etc...

Yes, there are kids in swimming who do it because it's an individual sport and they may not be talented, but these are not the kids who are winning.

The talent at the top is good, but it's not very deep.

The good thing about swimming is it rewards hard work. You can and will improve if you work hard and often.

And if you don't have the times, you don't do well nationally.

One difference I found is that regional kids, like myself, worked just as hard as the national kids, but the national kids just had more talent.

We had a few national kids, and I'd whoop them in practice but not at the meet.