duzzi said..sailquik said..duzzi said.. Sure, let's have a Olympic sprinter race over 20 meters instead of 100. Or a swimming race over 4 meters.
And they would be both totally impractical. (A starting dive itself takes you more than 4 meters).
Of course, the comparison is intentionally silly. But according to your logic swimmers could be tracked with a gps device and a gold medal be given to the swimmer who had the fastest 4 meters run within a 100 meters. Which of course would be silly, the winner could be last over 100 and first over 4.
Speed is traditionally reported over 500 meters or 1 nautical mile because we want to know who is the fastest to go from point A to point B. The only reason traditionally we, recreational sailors, use speed over a a certain time interval is because we do not have gates regularly set up to go through. But now we have good GPS, we do not need gates, and the best way to report an average speed might not be over time but over
distance. Simple enough: report your best speed over 100, 200, 500 meters.
Well, if you are going to be silly, you just degrade your credibility and point of view.
Did you not read my explanation of why the original WSSRC speed records where done over 500m? It was all about trying to get a legitimate accuracy with stone age hand timing.
With GPS speed measuring, we went to a time interval because that is what a GPS measures accurately. measuring a 'distance' with GPS introduces more error based on interpolation between data points, especial for 1Hz devices. Co-founders of GPS-SS, Martin Van Muers and Roger Van Togeren, settled on 10 seconds for very good reasons, not the least of which was that the devices of the day could only really get a reasonably good reading every 2 seconds. Averaging those 5 readings over 10 seconds improved their legitimacy significantly. Then having a ranking based on 5 x 10 seconds added another dimension of consistency - and quite a nice challenge in most places.
You are quite correct that 500m has remained the default measure of the WSSRC records. To change it would make no sense from a historical and comparative point of view. That does not in any way mean that records over a shorter distance or a set time period would be any less valid
now that we have the technology to measure them accurately.
It's also a fact that 10 seconds has become the default standard time measurement period for all practical purposes in the windsurfing speed sailing competition world. Both GPS-SS and GPS-TC, the two foremost databases for windsurfing speed emphasise this measure. (BTW, at 40 knots, one does around 250m in 10 seconds).
And despite you trying to dismiss the legitimacy of 2 second comparisons by comparing it with irrelevant 'records' and other irrelevant sports, the fact remains that
with a high Hz, best quality GNSS device,
2 seconds is quite a legitimate concept for comparisons in foiling or windsurfing top speeds. I am not suggesting we make it a world record category at all, but it would not be a ridiculous concept. I believe there is actually a gps measured Landsailing world record that is claimed over only a few seconds. edit: Confirmed that one of the most recent records was set over 50m or less than half a second! I had some correspondence many years ago with the timing team for an earlier record and they were using 4 x GT-31 GPS's to measure the top speed over, (from memory) I think, either 1 or 2 seconds. The +/- 0.5 mph was deemed to be acceptable accuracy for that world record. Current GNSS consumer technology accuracy is almost and order of magnitude better than that.
