Speakeasy forum: Maryland High School swimmer disqualified for illegal

Shaving!!???

http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/maryland-swim-team-retroactively-loses-county-title-because-153508295.html

(Yes, I should have used TinyUrl.)

They took away all her points, I assume in all competitions which dropped the High School to 3rd from 1st. And they've suspended the coach.

She's disqualified because she shaved 2 hours too late?? Has sports bureaucracy gone completely cuckoo (Yeah, that's a stupid question, I know.), but rules about shaving in swimming restricting the time frame? Surely steroids are bad need regulation, and shaving is a personal preference which doesn't mean that much? I know that swimmers all believe that shaving will help "shave" a couple of 100ths of a second off their time, and that its a touchstone for them, but to write it into the rules?

I remember a US Olympic swimmer Dawn ?? who caused controversy because she said she wanted to swim naked and totally shaved, or at least that was what she was reported to have said, in a world before Fox and E! TV and Entertainment Tonight and all the rest of the muck at the bottom of the TV barrel. I'd put her comment back before 1970, but that's just a guess.

Just for you James, a Maryland story. I still like to keep up on Md. news.

Rob