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In a lot of competitions like this I think DQs are too harsh of a penalty. It seems like it would be a lot more fair if minor and pedantic mistakes were met with time penalties so that people who try hard and give it their best can still be rated and compare and have their speed and number of mistakes still get measured against each themselves and each other, rather than a binary "were you perfect or not?"
My sister in law takes her dogs to agility competitions and there have been events where literally nobody qualifies. What's even the point of having the event then? If someone is actively cheating then disqualifying them seems appropriate. If someone messes up slightly, or does something which if allowed to slide would give them an advantage, give them a large enough penalty that there's no way to possibly abuse it and enough incentive to work on fixing it in the future, while still letting them compete and get a score.
There was a moment in biathlon when some competitors that came from nordic skiing that couldn't shoot for their life just powered trough the penalties and didn't even bother to aim before shooting because they were absurdly faster than the regular players. Probably interesting to observe once or twice, but definitely has potential to degrade the sport.
A good time penalty in swimming in theory is one that gives slightly higher time penalty than the advantage gained. Higher than that - and it is DQ by other means. But then you will have some different types of gaming the system.
Btw - strongly recommend ActuallyVen on youtube for his F1 cheating sketches.
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Most common stroke infractions do give you somewhat of an advantage, or they at least just totally change what even you are doing. Most kids' freestyle or crawl stroke is about twice as fast as their butterfly. The time penalties would have to be massive to make up for it. DQs above age thirteen are also pretty rare, so its clear that most kids can learn the strokes and the rules sufficiently to rarely DQ.
It is also somewhat hard to catch minor one time stroke infractions. If I glance over and think I saw an infraction and I describe any level of uncertainty then the Pool Ref will throw out the DQ. Usually stroke related problems are hard to see if they only happen once. Its usually that the kid is doing it wrong the entire time they are in my zone. I felt bad for the girl that did crawl during butterfly because I happened to be looking at her lane right as she did it. She had a 75% chance of being fine, but lost out on that cuz of bad luck.
One example is that you are allowed only two underwater pulls in breastroke off the wall before you are supposed to surface. I saw a kid do three, and that was after I missed him for about 5 meters off the wall. My estimate is that he actually did 4 or maybe even 5 underwater pulls. But I only reported seeing three because that is all I saw, even if I know via simple reasoning that he likely did 4 or 5. In his case if he had merely done three underwater pulls, which is illegal, I likely would not have caught him, because I would have only seen two of his pulls.
Okay that's a good point. The only viewing them 25% of the time adds some probabilistic volatility to things, but on average if someone gets away with 75% of their infractions then penalties ought to be four times as harsh to compensate, and at that point if they get harsh enough to guarantee someone last place you might as well just DQ them. It's not an ideal system, but it seems reasonable given the monitoring constraints.
Benefit of the doubt also goes to the swimmer. So maximum strictness if caught, but chances of being caught for non blatant rule violations is low.
The easiest one to catch is no two hand touch and that's also very easy to comply with.
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One thing I always liked about the TV game show Forged in Fire is that if someone didn't make something to specification at the end of the first round, or the second round, or the third round, they wouldn't even get judged. Your first job is to make specifications, then it is your job to see how well you did on that spec.
If someone can't complete the course, it isn't fair to compare them to people who can.
On the day I am pondering whether to obtain 1x30 variable speed for thinning and bevel setting, you had to mention this show ...
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Forged in Fire is nearly the ideal competition in my opinion, everyone's working hard, but they're almost all willing to help a competitor who had some poor luck or an early poor choice that lead to unforseen problems.
The bladesmith/blacksmith community is incredibly cooperative and supportive.
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At least for competitive swimming you just get DQ'd on that one particular event.
(You don't get booted from the meet entirely, or at least, you shouldn't be- this isn't like competitive shooting where that does happen, but that also only happens for safety infractions.)
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