Hahn Super Dry Fine Ocean Swimmers Series 2009

Several swimmers have queried the results of The Big Swim last Sunday, particularly the inclusion in the results of handicap times and points in the Hahn Super Dry Fine Ocean Swimmers Series 2009. So here is what it's all about ...

The Big Swim was the first of nine swims in the Hahn Super Dry Fine Ocean Swimmers Series 2009. The series runs over nine swims throughout the rest of the season. It's a pointscore series that uses a handicap system to even the playing field between the sexes and amongst the ages. We talked about it in our emailout last week, and we will again this week, too. Swimmers last year would recall the inaugural series in 2008. The objective is to encourage swimmers to take part in more swims, to promote new and country swims, and to provide a structure over the season to help you work on another goal.

Points are awarded for each swim in the series in which you take part. The more swims you do, the more points you get. We don't take just the best five, for example. But you must do 5 of the 9 swims to qualify, and two of those swims must be in the country. We'll have more details on oceanswims.com in the coming days.

In this series, we take each swimmer’s time and factor in a weighting for age and sex to produce a handicap time, then allocate points accordingly. From the handicap times, we produce what’s known as the Dezzie, which is the ratio between your time and the winner’s time. From the Dezzie, we produce the points out of 100. Thus the winner, with a Dezzie of 1, gets 100 points. If you had a Dezzie of 1.906, which means your time was almost twice the winner’s time, for example, you get points accordingly. In this way, every swimmer gets points according to how they performed relative to the winner. You’re not necessarily pushed down the list because a lot of people might have finished ahead of you.