That is most certainly not what I said as I think you are well aware.
What I actually said is the risk from allowing cameras at swimming galas (WTF should I be banned from filming my own child racing…) must be way lower than the risk to any child from falling down the stairs. In fact I would go further, I cannot think of any significant risk (and I mean real risk in the real world, not some made up theoretical risk) that would be caused by me filming my lad racing in a swimming gala. Thus people who think cameras at swimming galas should be banned cannot know much about risk probability and may well be paranoid.
How often has that happened ?
I will bet you good money neither you, nor anyone else, knows the answer to that question, it is all theoretical cobblers.
Basically for any Health & Safety edicts we should ask : exactly how much safer will this make us ?
And what are we sacrificing to achieve that ?
And I will bet you, or anyone else on here, that has not been done.
As regards filming galas that “excuse” has even less relevance anyway as kids are hardly identifiable in swim caps and goggles.
BTW, it is not very likely that kids that are theoretically being protected by that excuse, if it is likely at all (and I suspect it is very uncommon) it is far more probable it is estranged parents.I know a bit about website stats and how hard it is to get hits of sites as the internet is so massive, if any parent is really prepared to put that much effort into trawling though thousands of sites on the entire internet trying to find a potentially identifiable picture of someone they’ll almost certainly find them anyway, one way or another.
This is a good article on it all, in the Guardian actually, normally at the forefront of wanting to ban stuff and restrict our lives “to keep us safe” (it won’t let me put a link on so put it in a browser)
Why do schools really stop parents taking photographs of their children?
On that we can certainly agree.
I wish I was bringing my lad up in the 1970s or 1980s, in my view modern life is rubbish.
I suspect we will disagree about why it has changed, my contention is because modern society’s risk aversion is growing all the time, and what happened during Covid was that on Steroids.But don’t just take my word for it, Sir William Sargent who served as a permanent secretary of the Better Regulation Executive (tasked with reducing red tape = regulations) until 2009, was quoted in The Times (26 Sept 22 p38) “the essential difficulty of removing or undoing regulation is that it increases risk, but society has been increasingly risk averse for at least a century”.
I predict if we keep pandering to all these paranoid people sooner or later everything in life will be banned unless it is specifically allowed. It will happen, sooner or later, just look at the trend, it’s frightening, it really is.
@SheffSwim – I know you are new here, so before I say anything else, can I just ask if you clicked on the black arrow in my post to see my complete reply?
Kids are bought up to fear everyone these days, and there is a cost to that. Take school fencing. I was at school in the 1970s and we did not have fencing like prisons with gates that are locked all day and CCTV entry systems and all visitors having to wear identity tags. Kids aren’t stupid, they can see they are all locked in and the world is locked out, what message does that send to them ? I do not want my lad to fear the world and assume that everyone in it is out to get him.
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As I stated in the first post on this, you are unlikely to be stopped filming. I have plenty of videos of my son from galas.
I went to a comprehensive, we just did football, fencing sounds a bit posh!
I’ll get my coat.
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My son did fencing in primary school but they put an age on it as the kids started playing pirates (i kid you not, they were Yr2 
)
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I bet you were well chuffed when he went “Dad, I am starting polo at school” until you found out you were having to buy a few ponies 
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luckily its not that posh
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Has anyone done one of the ‘Swim Doctor’ sessions offered at the Better facilities in London? I’m down for work in a couple of weeks and wondered if it would be worth going to one at Stratford or Charlton. I’m not very clear on the structure though, I couldn’t tell if it was like a formal class lesson, or (and this is what I’d prefer) they watch you swim for a bit and then give you feedback on technique and some hints/drills for you to go away and work on yourself specifically.
Just wondered if it was worth the additional fiver compared to another session of me plodding about myself. But if is not very good for someone at my level I won’t bother.
She literally watched me coaching 4 juniors and copied my set as it went on, even using my hand paddle on forehead drill straight after she watched the kids do it.
Im sure its ok , looked like a generic fitness set the times Ive seen as she had 2 or 3 full 50m lanes of mixed ability.
Thanks, that’s really helpful. Will give it a miss.
Here’s an amusing anecdote for those who think that videoing swim galas puts kids at risk if someone is after them (or the parent).
My lad was in a gala at PF at the w/e. My main interest was obviously in my lad’s swimming but after him I was particularly interested in his friend at the club. Anyway, this friend was in one race and I was following him and cheering him on but I didn’t think he swam particularly well really. It was only when they finished I realised I had actually been looking at the wrong swimmer !
Such is the difficulty of recognising a child in a swim cap and goggles… And I was actually there remember, not possibly watching some low res video on the internet !
My 9 year old lad swam his first inter club gala on Sunday. He did well in the 25m Back (silver) with a big PB and even better in the relay. He swam the fastest leg and did a PB by about 1.5 sec which got his team a bronze. But his team’s swimmers starts and finishes were awful, they’d have got silver easily had they been even 20% better at them.
His individual 25m Freestyle was of interest. He came 3rd but his time was nothing special, only slightly under a PB set months ago. Why was the thing. He had an awful start, he was about 1.7 seconds behind the eventual winner (as they went under the back stroke flags) yet was only about 1.3 secs behind by the end, i.e. he was actually faster in the water.
The winner did a fantastic start, I can only assume he has done dozens, possibly even hundreds of starts of the blocks. Why for the life of me my lad’s squad hardly ever do starts of the blocks (needed because the angles are all different) I cannot imagine. I find it VERY frustrating. If it were up to me I would make sure all swimmers do at least 5 starts off the blocks every week in training, and/or dozens in the last session before a gala.
Note I only know all of the above because I have studied my videos of the races, something that technically I was not supposed to have shot.
Madness…
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We did fencing at my school in our animal husbandry class. It was to stop the sheep from escaping 
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Must resist, must resist !
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It was genuinely called that but of course in Somerset, we thought it was normal anyway.
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I went to a comprehensive too, but we were taught (not sure if that is quite the right word for it!) fencing by our German teacher who apparently represented Israel in the 1968 Olympics.
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Did you son enjoy himself?
Starts and turns are practiced most sessions by us, not strictly once a bit older but they will usually start on blocks for sets and you turn every length anyway, younger we do turns / starts practice for 10 or 15minutes each session. We also do a lot of fly kicking like hard for 15 into easy to end also as underwater phase is critical
I spent 2 days and 22hrs at galas with 280miles of driving this weekend so my son could swim for 12mins 
I did officiate so my legs are trashed today , standing for 6 hours a day with regualr climbs up the step for every turn isn’t easy!
loads of people videoing again at our gala.
We had a productive weekend, a gold in 200Br (they did double age groups as well so he was racing kids older) , pb in 50fly ~34iirc, an improved county time in 50bk of 35.53 and new county times in 100bk (1:15.63) and 100br (1:26.82). The 50 and 100 free were slow as due to lack of swimming the past month we used them as events to raise HR as they both fell 15 minutes before main events! 200bk was last event of the day, and was literally used as a cool down after a great opening 100 to practice setting off hard and settling.
Hopefully the 3 times he has gets him high enough in rankings to be invited to the LAC in Feb for counties. You get the QF time but then need to be top 24 (usually but can be more sometimes) for an invite. If an AG doesn’t have enough QF’ers then the numbers are spread to other more competitive AG’s hence not really being able to tell just yet. Also the mix between LCM/SCM times also adds complexity. But you can only control the controllable and if not invited next open is beginning of March.
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